Dana Massey: The MMO Litmus Test

So whatever happened to "Wish"? 

 Enjoyed your article. I like the idea of unlockable content myself. The funny thing is I have seen unlockable content so to speak in an old game called Everquest before. You had to get keyed for certain raids and you have to also do raids in sequence to get the necessary gear for the next. I loved this design myself. I think you are right on though on though. 

I would like to see a game with no levels and progression was just unlocking content all the way through. You do this to unlock this, so on and so on. This can be accomplished with gear as well as in my example. WoW had "keyed" content as well at first. Thanks for the article.

It's about measurables.  In single person RPGs, you've got a static story line to follow - even if there are different paths through it.  The measurable is the point in that storyline.  In MMOs, you have a wide variety of choices and the measurable is your level and class.

For example:  In RPGs, arriving at a certain city measures how far you've gotten in a game.  In MMOs, you have several dozen cities to visit and that feat does not measure your advancement.

Nice article, Dana.

Certainly, it would be interesting to see a game really take the idea to implementation. I think that DAOC offers other wisdom. IMHO part of the death of that game was the shift from massive warfare to "Group vs. Group". People found out that they could get the most realm points (the method of advancement) by forming well oiled groups that avoided objectives but instead mowed through other players as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

So, again, the "grind" came in to the "end game" through Realm Point acquisition.
WoW has it's end game "grind" through item acquisition (raiding) or PvP (arena or battlegrounds - arena point or honor point grind).

If I understand you correctly, what you're driving toward is advancement through the game where you don't have a number to represent what you're doing, but simply the indication of your success or failure and the needs driven by that. For example, if you get to the next zone and fail at overcoming the creatures there, then you didn't obtain sufficient advancement in gear or skills from the previous zone. I guess that's still a grind, but it blurs it by not having a level meter tied to it. 

Originally posted by Sylvene

It's about measurables.  In single person RPGs, you've got a static story line to follow - even if there are different paths through it.  The measurable is the point in that storyline.  In MMOs, you have a wide variety of choices and the measurable is your level and class.

For example:  In RPGs, arriving at a certain city measures how far you've gotten in a game.  In MMOs, you have several dozen cities to visit and that feat does not measure your advancement.

Yeah, but couldn't a MMORPG be built that had the same advancement feel as that single player RPG?  If you get to that city, you've made it to a certain level.  Like, without ports, someone who gets to Shatterath has to be at least 58, to make a WoW analogy?

Originally posted by Sylvene

It's about measurables.  In single person RPGs, you've got a static story line to follow - even if there are different paths through it.  The measurable is the point in that storyline.  In MMOs, you have a wide variety of choices and the measurable is your level and class.

For example:  In RPGs, arriving at a certain city measures how far you've gotten in a game.  In MMOs, you have several dozen cities to visit and that feat does not measure your advancement.

I have to agree with this reply. I think it's spot on.

What I'm now curious about is if you ask LOTRO players "What book are you up to?" if they'll reply with the numbers of the book and chapter or if they will describe the book and chapter,

It can. Guild Wars actually does its PvE Progression primarily through storyline in the Expansions Factions and Nightfall. Especially in Nightfall, the level is really just a sidenote.

However, the problem is not whether you can build such a thing, the problem is whether or not players at large accept it. First of all, your game would have to be much smaller than other MMORPGs unless you get a monstrous budget, because you ll have to fill the game with real, interesting, unique content most of the time. The level/points/rating/skill advancement schemes have huge advantages in terms of what you can get away with. Imagine an average zone in WoW, say, Hellfire Peninsula in the Outlands. If there werent points or levels to gain, how many of the quests there would be accepted as decent content? Less than 20% probably.

Or even worse, Lord of the Rings Online, which is right now probably the worst offender in terms of utterly formulaic quests. As soon as points on a progression bar are gone, players will not put up with even remotely as much content extensions, grinds, cookie-cutter crapquests and idiotic, nonsensical random quests and activities.

So , the game would be shorter.

Then there is another level to it, which is the competition. Even the most paced and happy players, at times, feel like they have to keep up somehow. Sometimes, people actually do have to keep up in order to group up. Unless you make your game mostly singleplayer or find a way to create good, enticing group content outside the main storyline/progression path, you splinter the playerbase even more.

Also, I am not sure people will like this new way of playing. I mean, seriously, racking up progression points of various sorts is obviously VERY attractive to many people. Its also very easy to understand, straightforward, and a clear measurement when comparing with anyone else. It works. Its limited, boring maybe, one-dimensional, but to the mass audience, I dont think these are drawbacks.

Maybe ToR surprises us all and becomes truly a new model of MMORPG, but even then it is not easy to copy... WoW already raised the bar, or rather, the pricetag on modern MMOs insanely. Its safe to say the budget of ToR will be in the triple-digit millions of dollars easily. That kind of money allows a lot of content indeed, but that kind of money is also utterly exclusive to such huge projects.

Look how smaller companies like Turbine already struggle with their content delivery in the shadow of WoW and its huge budget. I dont see a content-driven progressional path possible to finance for anyone outside the biggest 2 or 3 studios and publishers any time soon.

Originally posted by Sylvene

It's about measurables.  In single person RPGs, you've got a static story line to follow - even if there are different paths through it.  The measurable is the point in that storyline.  In MMOs, you have a wide variety of choices and the measurable is your level and class.

For example:  In RPGs, arriving at a certain city measures how far you've gotten in a game.  In MMOs, you have several dozen cities to visit and that feat does not measure your advancement.

 

I must agree with this comment too. Obviously, it is a closed verses open environment too, as well as story. In the single person RPG you can actually feel being the focus of the story. In an MMO you are competing with others for the story, leading to camping and kill stealing.

While the questins posed are an interesting litmus test, how would the answer be if a player has reached the end game of an MMO, where you have reached the limit of your level?

Beautiful. Just...beautiful.

And that's something that Turbine got right in Asheron's Call 1. Sure, it had levels, but that wasn't the focus. I can't EVER remember worrying about levels while playing AC other than as a "litmus" for whether I should attack a creature or not. "leveling up" wasn't the point in AC. Going out and exploring, finding new places that were added in the monthly updates, the truly randomness of their loot drop system...those are the things that grabbed me, hooked me. There was no "endgame". There was just the never old satisfaction "boldly going where you hadn't before".

You know, adventuring. I think that's where alot of companies have lost their way, too. They shifted focus from "adventurer" and locked focus on "hero".

The level based system is the Staples "easy button" for developers who want Have CEOs and shareholders whinings sitting on top of their monitors day in and out. "Get it done as soon as possible" is practically pumped through the speakers like the Indianapolis Colts pumping crowd noise through their stadium speakers.

I honestly,very truly hope that you take your "access" to this industry to heart and try to convey this message when you have the opportunity to these companies. I really don't believe they (management) visit websites such as this (too worried about making tee times) and someone needs to convey as much as possible at these E3's and GDCs that the natives are restless. The vocal ones are here, sure, but just because the greater majority aren't on forums like theses doesn't mean they don't feel the same way. I'm of the opinion the Bystander Effect is in full effect here. People just figure they aren't the only one that feels that way so someone in the customer base must be conveying the same sentiment to the industry.

Dana, you are missing one very important difference between DAoC and WAR.

The 3rd realm.

If DAoC only had 2 realms fighting for those keeps we would have seen exactly the same thing WAR has been dealing with since release.

That 3rd realm really adds all the difference.  Just think about it for a second.  If there was a 3rd realm in WAR we wouldn't just have people swapping keeps, we would have real fights, especially if 1 realm manged to take all but 1 keep, the battle would be epic for that last keep.

In my opinion this is the main reason WAR's RvR is lacking.

" I tried this quiz at E3 and not a single person answered any differently."

Your informal survey was flawed. Do you think the average MMO gamer goes to E3?  Heck, I'd bet that only the most hardcore of the hardcore can get in (sure, with exceptions).  However, your article is very good overall and I enjoyed it.  I was in WAR when those changes were made and observed that. My guild was all about maxxing so it wasn't really a surprise. I think that's just general human nature when you're in a pvp-oriented game.  My wife and I were just playing for enjoyment and to see new things so pvp wasn't our focus... yes, that means we didn't really fit in with the WAR-mindset.  However, the real thing that drove us away wasn't that as much as the over-abundance of crowd control.  :)

I have lost a ton of interest in MMOs. WAR was something I was waiting on (because of DAoC) but found out quickly that I did not like just 2 realms. I enjoyed RvRvR so much but RvR lost something for me. I keep trying games but haven't found anything that catches my attention like EQ did when it came out.

I haven't given up but I seem to be playing almost everything but MMOs these days. I keep trying but too often there is nothing that holds my attention. Now I seem to be waiting for games like Global Agenda, FFXIV, the Old Republic, DC Universe, and The Agency. I am hoping there will be new and interesting ways to play through such games.

I loved EQ and DAoC. I had tons of fun with those and I think the difficulty was part of it. I play for a bit and don't really feel any challenges. The problems stated by the article are fair but they miss problems that some others have with MMOs now.

IMO

It was obvious during the design and beta stages of war when they anounced (and fans cheered) that there would be seperate levels for pvp and pve and individual ways to to level them that this was always going to be the outcome.

I don't think the litmus test in itself is actually relevent and all that really happened was the author seemed to have a eurica moment when he suddenly realised that with levels in a game, a massive portion of the playerbase will always take the course of least resistance. Now this is not meant as an insult but that really is no revelation.

How people describe their current position in a game may be an indication on how people view their progress and maybe even a slight indication as to how they play their game but it most certainly doesn't indicate whether the game is good or people enjoy it or if the journey to end game (and the end game itself) is worth it. MMO's have (or should have, which is why its quite interesting someone bought up LotRO) multiple options when progressing their chars through an MMO this is much more likely to be why they use level as indication as telling someone about the quest they are on or part of the game doesn't tell anything as the other person may never have even been there or experienced it.

I am not deliberately trying to pick holes in the atricle but the conclusion to me also doesn't hold true either in practice nor logic. The games that are used to pad the argument, such as TOR, which are touted as being primarily story focused and driven is only subject to each gamers preferences and opinions on games. Is it a good approach to a game? O/c it is people like a good story and canon but it is not going to save the game if the mechanics and end game are not also to the gamers preference.

I don't believe it is about taking a single player game and basically making it function as an MMO, an MMO is a completely different animal and people playing them have entirely different expectations. Few people hate levels more than me but that for me is more due to the fake functionality they bring to a game. But it doesn't change players methods of progression in general, they will still use web sites to skim through content and they will always take the easiest route all the time there is some form of competition to end game.

 Dana is insightful as usual.

Until we move away from a model which provides goals like gear and levels, we will be stuck. Levels are easy compartments which aid development of games. We can lump gear, quests, skills and content in these compartments. To create a game which ignores this is going in undiscovered country. Sure you can emulate RPGs (and, like all of you, my last hope is Bioware), but you get hammered by MMO veterans as the game not being a real MMO.

There has to be a way or method to personalize a MMO environment (or at least give the impression that you are playing a RPG), but still give keep the massive in massive multiplayer.

Very good points. Its too bad WoW is so successful. B/c of it, it will be hard to make games where 'levels' are not the focus.

I like your idea, and I think you're right on.

Thanks to the Motion controllers and the natal, debuted at E3, I think you'll see in some near future the inclusion of these devices in a MMO setting. Your character could tie movements, individualized to specific spells and combat manuvers, where where you HIT makes the difference. YOu could have specific gesutres that have to be learned and mastered in the correct fashion to produce spells. The limits are endless.

tw!

Originally posted by TheHavok

So whatever happened to "Wish"? 

 

Yes, please write an article about why Wish failed.

That would be more interesting than all the drek I've read from you so far.

Tomb of Wraithwall -> FF XII

Scars Cave -> Aion

Also:  Gamers play games.  People without real jobs go to gaming conventions and TALK about gaming. :)

Originally posted by Sylvene

It's about measurables.  In single person RPGs, you've got a static story line to follow - even if there are different paths through it.  The measurable is the point in that storyline.  In MMOs, you have a wide variety of choices and the measurable is your level and class.

For example:  In RPGs, arriving at a certain city measures how far you've gotten in a game.  In MMOs, you have several dozen cities to visit and that feat does not measure your advancement.

 

Well....I disagree with this statement.  In Oblivion, Morrowind, Fallout 3 (all Bethesda games, I know) I can be in any city whenever I want.  Where I am on the map isn't an accomplishment at all.  What I've done on the way.....that's the accomplishment.

Call me silly, but I play all MMORPG just like I play single RPGs.  I've played too many to count, starting with EQ and AC....and I have never....never.....gotten a character to max level.  For me, it's about the story.  And to understand all the stories, both little and large, main and minor, one needs to quest.  So....I quest and explore....and level very very slowly....then I move on to the next game....over and over again.

For me....it's not about "getting there"....wherever that might be.  It's about "what I'm doing on the way."

I wish games would just dump the character levels and instead of level bars, have skill bars, where the more I used my dagger, the more that skill improved, allowing me to add points to attributes that are used in the dagger skill....such as dagger, speed, agility...etc.  Many games do this, but they also use the "character level" stat along side of it.  I just don't get the purpose of character level. 

End game?  Never needed one cuz I've never been there.

I've often wondered why MMOs haven't at least attempted to capture a bit of what makes single player MMOs so intriguing, which is of course the immersive content. I totally get what Dana is saying. I want to immerse myself in a world with stories that I am taking part in, either as an integral part, or as just a sidenote character. What is important to me is that I do feel like my efforts are rewarded with a strengthening, but it doesn't have to follow a level/class model for me to feel that progress. One thing that bothered me about MMOs was how it seemed like in a mainline party-oriented quest, only the leader of the party got the plot points. Everyone else was left out and just needed to fight the monsters, but didn't get to participate in the quest with the same level of immersion as the leader. That's why there should be more scripted cinematics in quests, solo or otherwise, to draw people in and make them feel like they are part of something. I know this wouldn't appeal to the grindaholics out there, but I feel there are a great many of us who would like to feel that the world they enter month after month is truly alive and more than just a place where key areas are useful for farming or grinding experience/levels. I'm hoping that perhaps FFIV will provide this, if only because at the heart of all Final Fantasy games I have played has been an amazing story.

This sounds a lot like what the new Star Wars MMO is supposed to be like. Less levels, more storyline progression.

I think this reflects the growing domination (amongst mainstream) of themepark over sandbox. Back in the day, pre-nge swg players might have told you what they were doing rather than their level.

Originally posted by qombi

 Enjoyed your article. I like the idea of unlockable content myself. The funny thing is I have seen unlockable content so to speak in an old game called Everquest before. You had to get keyed for certain raids and you have to also do raids in sequence to get the necessary gear for the next. I loved this design myself. I think you are right on though on though. 

I would like to see a game with no levels and progression was just unlocking content all the way through. You do this to unlock this, so on and so on. This can be accomplished with gear as well as in my example. WoW had "keyed" content as well at first. Thanks for the article.

I agrre also. EQ2 had most zones done so you had to unlock them too, but they took it away because people complained.

But there is more fun things than gaining loot and level up, at least some MMOs should focus more on that.

I do agree with a few things mentioned but, there is some points that where made that i believe are down right stupid.

Even as much as some gamers feel about grinding the fact is in the end they enjoy doing it.

Say you are grinding to get faction reputation for something you really want. The key part here is you are grinding for a reason. For gear that gives you good stats but also has a cool look and feel to it. Either it being a weapon that glows or a cool animation on the weapon you are grinding because of those reasons and the stats to better improve the class you are playing.

In a game like i don't know ... say Zelda, a gamer does not care about levels like they would in a mmorpg. The reason for this is very simple. In Zelda you are grinding to get to the point where you get the sword, bow and arrow, the suit that allows you to swim underwater.  What is great about Zelda is that you are thrown into a epic storyline right off the bat and it keeps continuing till the very last sword swing.

Another reason why a gamer won't care about his level in a Rpg like Zelda is because it's a self progression game. Though at times i wish that Zelda was a mmorpg i feel it would take away from my personal enjoyment because there would probably be requirements and rules i would have to follow to progress the class i am playing by being forced to group. Personally i hate playing a mmorpg that makes me feel forced to group to progress the class i am playing and probably why after 4 years i no longer play World of Warcraft.  I am a strong believer that mmorpg stands for just that. A place where mass amounts of people are playing the same game i am and i like that idea. I do not believe it's a place where i should be forced to do any grouping to progress to enjoy the same lore or gear upgrades as the guy beside me that enjoys grouping. Mind you i do enjoy grouping from time to time. Just on my terms, not the games.

As of right now i am playing Requiem and the reason why i enjoy it is because i am focusing on how to make the class i am playing better and stronger. I am finding myself checking out website to find out where and how i can get the best gear for my class and what i am finding is a amazing options and I'm not really caring about my xp that much. I can either go pvp (which i enjoy quite a bit from time to time) or i can grind on some mobs till an item drops or i can run instances. I have a choice and that's what i think i hated most about World of Warcraft. I didn't have much of any and the choices i had forced me to group to get the best stuff. No amount of Rep grinding or gold farming i did would compare to someone that just did 1 night of Raiding and got all the epics he could want would put me on par with the items he got. To me it wasn't hard it was annoying. Honesty any mmorpg that forces me a gamer to group to progress and justifies it as hard content just turns me off.

I have to give it to Blizzard on 1 aspect though. When it came to leveling in Zul'drak and questing in Ice Crown i don't remember looking at my xp bar once and i think the reason was because of the epic quest lore i was involved in. I played a Arthus and as the Lich King. I was a ghoul and for a short time part of the scourge. I was totally involved in a sea of lore. I didn't care about how much gold the quest would give me or how much xp i would of got. Even if the items where epic i didn't care because i got that epic feeling i got while doing the quests. Blizzard slightly touched on this leaving me as a gamer wanting more but, there wasn't any when i finished in Ice crown and it left me empty. I found myself ending up having to group for 5 mans heroics at start. Then it turned into 10 man Naxx runs and finally 25 man Naxx runs with really no epic lore until i was fighting KT and even then i couldn't catch it all because people on Vent where talking and screaming and the text just spammed my chat box like the lore didn't even matter.

I have to agree something needs to change in mmorpg but i am afraid that won't happen for a very long time because how player A) feels about player B's)  progression and what is refering to as hard, fun and down right enjoyable to that 1 player.

Epic lore inside quests and chain quests.

Personal solo progression

Choices on how a player progesses

Reward Reward Reward and not with useless greens or semi ok items.

Those 4 things need to change or mmorpg will just end up sucking it up 2 months after release.

I dont know Dana, I think you dont get Warhammer Online. You seem to be taking some potshots at it.

You say its all about renown, well yeah of course it is. Its like faulting WoW for its instances. Theres nothing wrong with renown.

And they've done some great things.

Gone are the endless runs thru a dungeon waiting for that class drop item and hoping that you win that roll . Yes there is still endless runs hitting keep after keep, jumping from zone to zone waiting for a flip. But at the end of it all you WILL get that item you've been wanting so bad. Influence rewards is one of the most ingenious things (along with PQ's) that WAR has contributed to the MMO genre.

And leveling thru rvr (pvp), you say it ruined the game. I think its obvious that a pvp game isnt for you.

Hell, I get pissed I cant level my toon thru rvr only, I have to actually take quests to advance.

Just recently Ive been lucky enough that Ive found a server that I can advance thru rvr only, and my god its the most fun Ive had in gaming in a really long time. I'd rather pit my wits against a human player over a scripted NPC any day.

And ruining the game by "making the journey fun". WTF is up with that statement. The most fun I had in WoW was leveling my hunter from 1-60, my mage from 1-60. I hated the repetitiveness of the instances (the whole scripted thing).

"Okay were on the second boss, mage you stand there, warrior you stand there and remember to taunt, blah, blah, blah."

The journey was so much better than reaching the destination.

Umm calling MMO's niche genre...LOL

Dude, the average MMO player repurchases the game every tthree months (if you put it into the perspective of single player game pricing).

Lets do WoW as an example. I know people that have been playing for 2+ years. In that time they have repurchases the box value of an average PC/console game 7 times. How many people do you know that will purchase the same single player game again every 3 months?

As a matter of fact I'd even go so far as to say MMO's are killing the single player PC gaming industry. I wouldnt call that niche.

And waiting for a game that doesnt use levels as a progress bar, a golden age.

Do you have any experience of MMO gaming outside of the Big-3 of Sony/Mythic/Blizzard? (sorry for the jab)

I said it a long time ago on EVE's forums. "CCP are trailblazers". And in my opinion they dont get the recognition for the ground breaking they did. You are a good example of that. There is a five year old game that fits your Golden Age criteria, and not once was it mentioned.

The truth is not having levels to measure your progress scares alot of people.

I seen this post as very negative, written by a person who hasnt weaned themselves off of the WoW teat, who has a hard time accepting something that isnt viewed as the norm by 10m people.

Innovation isnt bad, and stumbling along the way isnt reason enough to point a finger and cry "FAIL!".

On a side note. The way you described SW:ToR has me worried.

I dont want to be a player in a predetermined story. I want to BE the story.

I would like to comment on the two questions at the front of the article themselves.

The reason people answer those two questions in that way is a single player RPG has a finite finish point. There are  a couple true sandbox type games although they are usuall space based...but I never had fun playing those anyways. So if you ask someone where they are on a journey which has a specific begining point and a specific ending point the chances are you are going to get a metric that defines a point in that journey IE city x or dungeon y.

In an MMO there is no endpoint unless the game simply runs out of subscribers and money. Thus the game itself is "infinite"(I use infinite as a term loosely here). In such a game you the journey is instead measured from a begining point to an end point this being levels in many cases. In other cases its unlockable content aka EQ1 with planes of power progression, GoD progression etc. In all other ways how can you descirbe a way point in something which has no final destination?

So while the rest of your article does have some good points and I aggree with the idea of the journey being more important than reaching the end as an ideal...to make the assumption that the way we answer those two questions actually means anything of significance I think a bad assumption. We are time based creatures that think in terms of linear paths. We all have a destination in mind when we set out...we might never reach that destination or it may change frequently...but the destination is there in our minds and the metric we use to measure our journey is completely dependant on the type of journey we are on and what the destination is.

For instance I might respond to question #2 I am a lvl 30 human mage. Depending on the game that could mean a lot of things about where I am on my journey. It could denote the type and location of the content I have visited and not yet able to visit. It should denote the type of gameplay I experience which would perhaps be different than that of a lvl 30 darkelf healer or whatever.

In the end its not the metric that is the problem or the speed of attaining a particular metric...whether its levels, skills, unlocks, equipment, reputation etc. The problem still boils down to these questions: Is the content fun? Is there enough content for the money I am paying? Everyone will answer these questions differently for every game out there. The only important answers are the ones you give to determine if you spend your money wisely.

Edit: After rereading the article i wanted to add one more thing. I believe i stated this discussion from the last column but I want to reemphasize it here. What each individual views as fun is unique to them. To hollar for all games to be what you think is fun is just as bad and just as wrong as for all games to take the WoW route and try to copy them. If i wanted to play WoW I would play wow....give me something different please. So while you do have an idea of what makes a game fun...please dont expect all games to fit your model as that would be boring to about 80% of the gaming population. We need a wide diversity of games and game types so everyone can have fun in thier own way.

My biggest pet peeve is when I jump into the forums of a game I am looking forward to because of the way the devs have described it and watch as people come and go complaining how the game will suck because its not an exact copy of thier favorite MMO from the past. How every fundamental system in the game just has to be changed or the game will suck. The biggest example of this are pvp types come into pve game forums and yell for advanced pvp systems and pve types come into a game designed around pvp and whine about lack of pve content. The same goes for the casual vrs hardcore and the solo vrs group players.

Without having read many of the posts in this thread, here is what I think:

Any MMO has content that is built around formulas and equations. This can not be avoided. However, what happens is that companies design concepts that in theory sound good, but as soon as people start figuring out the underlying things of how they work and why, they just go about finding tricks and efficient ways to accomplish goals or tasks instead of following along with any parts of it designed to pull the player in to some virtual world of play. What I think needs to happen is more intricate designing of games so that it is much more difficult to understand exactly what in the game always causes different things; without making the game unplayable. An analogy for this would be with encryption. It is very easy to multiply two numbers together, but it can be very diffucult to then factor the result of their multiplication. Creators needs to find a way to create different parts and "multiply" them together so that they are still fun and useable but the way in which things are exactly working is not as well known or decipherable by the players. In this way, they are more immeresed in the world. I don't claim to have any idea for how to actually do this. It is merly a train of thought that I think deserves consideration within the MMO development community. LIke the original story said, the MMO's need to level up.

I agree that developers need to do something to get mmos more interesting.   But in the end I think it is all up to the players and how they think about the game.  Im playing Warhammer Online right now and I love it.  I do the pvp because I think that it is fun, im not doing it just to get my maximum renown.  I just think that everyone has gotten used to going about the fastest way to get to the level cap of whatever they are playing.  You have to play the game to enjoy it, not just to be the best, and I think alot of people play mmos just to be the best at them. 

The reason single player rpgs are soo much more immersive is because they generally look better and have more things in them to explore. 

AoC, I think, is  a step in the right direciton in making things more fun in mmos.  I think that once AoC gets all its problems sorted out that it will be a big mmo, maybe even challenge WoW.  It has THE best graphics of any mmo, it does have a storyline, and it has the most involving combat of any mmo.  I say just give it time and it will shine.

But right now, I'd say that Warhammer Online is the most fun mmo i've ever played.

I have a lot of problems with the question to be honest. In the game I am currently playing, I have no less than 7 characters, 4 of them are played actively and 3 are at max level. Asking me, where I am at is pretty meaningless, I'd probably answer with my "mains" level and such just because it was the simplist answer to a nonsensical question, not out of some deep and meaningful motivational difference.

Secondly, all the harping on WAR was a poor choice. We could spend weeks debating what Mythic did wrong (or right) but it's not really relevent to your main point.

>edit< Because I have to, AoC fans, please get a grip. The game is stagnant and over, it will never again rise to the level of subs it had at launch, let alone challenge WoW. I'm not going to slam the game in detail, but please, show a little contact with reality.

Excellent article. I fully agree. The main problem with WoW is the advancement. When you stop advancing in levels, it stops being fun, because that's all there really is to do is advance in levels.

SWG I think had an awesome formula and had great potential to break away from this. There were different things to do, the community came together to create awesome things. "Leveling" was hardly on people's radar back closer to the beginning.

MMO developers are too compelled to follow the formula.

As some people already said ... ppl who attend E3 are not a good representative of gamers, at all. I also disagree that mmos are niche genre. I think in the recent years, especially with WoW that has changed. You do have a point about the whole fun thing though. DAoC was my first mmo, and since that game I've played most of the major mmo titles. SWG was something that I had high hopes for, but somehow they managed to release the game with all the bugs a game can have. Like the bug that let you get the stormtrooper armor, like 3rd best faction armor of the whole game, 4 days after the release. I also had fun playing WoW when it first came out, as well as EQ2.

The thing is I never had as much fun as I did playing DAoC (just thinking about grinding willows at gna faste makes me happy) and that game was HARD. Like leveling up to 50 was a HUGE HUGE deal. There were no maps, you had to find the dungeons either from other players or remembering either the /loc or the enviroment. There were not as many quests and they were def not straight forward. I remember all those quests that you had to go at specific times or kill a whole lot of something for the guy to spawn. The game was not cartoonish and had a very authentic feel to it. When you died, it really sucked because you lost xp and going back to your grave was always scary because of the aggro. There were no mounts except for those horse rides from major areas/cities to the next. There were 3 realms, something that no other game ever replicated that way and I don't get why. Each realm had so many truely unique areas and named monsters. Crafting was SO difficult and slow. Also there was a great community feel, maybe it had something to do with the age group. For example on the mid side, from pretty much lvl 45 to 50 everyone would go near the dragon and kill all those werewolves. There were no warbands or whatever, so the two groups had to manually work together. Also there was a que, you would pm the person in charge and based on your class you'd have to go and camp at the edge waiting until it was your turn. I can go on and on but that was just the PVE part. Once you got to 50 and got your epic gear, it was like a whole new game was unlocked. Each realm had relics and keeps and anyone who ever played RVR in that game knows how much fun it was. it was even fun(sometimes more so) when there were a few people fighting. Not to mention how the keep system played into darkness falls which was also an amazing idea, a great place for mix pve and pvp, and to get gear.

I played WAR in beta and also after release, and I can safely say, it was the biggest dissapointment of my mmo gaming experience. And thats where I agree with you about the fun thing. They added all this crap assuming if you can find where youre quest is without ever having to even read the quest stuff, it will cut down on wasting time and instead you will have FUN. All those scenarios, IMO, were just terrible and killed any potential for pvp fun. NOt to mention the tiny number of classes they have as well as the whole class/race thing. Also it really bothered me that they kept trying to use terms like RVR...which made no sense where there were only two sides. I also think mmos not being a niche genre really opened it up to a whole lot of crazy young kids, the problem I had with WoW once it really took off. Almost every DAoC player will agree that as soon as the expansions came out with the idea of "less grind" the game went to hell.

I think my mmo days are over for good, but I'm always watching for something to come that is actually fun as a game, not just borrowing elements that were tradiotionally "fun" and throwing them into a vat.

A couple general responses here...

First, I am not taking any shots at Warhammer here. I have been playing it, so it becomes the most obvious example in my articles. That unto itself should be a compliment. No game is perfect, and I think everyone knows the core flaws, but it has its value too. I am not attempting to pick on it, it is just my best example in a few cases. At its core, it is a game that by all logic should have been a hit, but wasn't. So disecting why is an interesting exercise.

A couple people mentioned Wish. Let's just say, God invented the NDA for a reason. I've written some pretty high level stuff on the topic (google my name, Wish and The Escapist), but that's about as deep into it as I will ever get. That ship has long since sailed.

Let's face it.

People don't want great content in MMORPGs. Of course, I'm making an over-generalization, but it is still true.

I'm just wondering, what % of players who played for example, Wrath of the Lick King, and just skiped through the text of the quests and just looked at the objectives? I did, personally. But even if you make the game without any levels and content base, some people will enjoy it and some others, will just skip through the content, do quest ASAP to advance in the content. It's going to be content grinding because people will want to cap the content as fast as possible to access the high content available to the game.

It's going to be the same problem, just in a different setting.

So is there a "true" solution?

I don't think so, humans are driven to show their worth through any means necessary, and for some, MMORPGs are it. Alright, I give it to  you that it isn't much worth, but the online world is a total different entity and growing at a breath-taking pace.

So personally, I don't believe there is a solution.

Like you mentionned, it happened with WAR.

In Darkfall, people grind weapon / archery / magic on afk players, while the afk players grind them defensive skills.

In WoW, you grind gear and then a few weeks or months later you grind the upper new set of gear.

In [insert new game name here], you grind content super fast with your new "Get to Max Content in 6 hours of Gameplay" guide, sold for 9.99$ U.S.

Originally posted by Sylvene

It's about measurables.  In single person RPGs, you've got a static story line to follow - even if there are different paths through it.  The measurable is the point in that storyline.  In MMOs, you have a wide variety of choices and the measurable is your level and class.

For example:  In RPGs, arriving at a certain city measures how far you've gotten in a game.  In MMOs, you have several dozen cities to visit and that feat does not measure your advancement.

Agreed. The underlying question is "how far have you got in the game?". In AoC, if you answered "Out of Tortage" it was an answer to the same question. Or "what part of the story are you up to?" works in SRPGs because character abilities have often progressed to match what the story wants the character to do.

The hilarious issue of single-player vs MMO-player games is that people quit single player RPGs at probably the same rate as MMOs. Think of all the RPGs you've started but not finished - I try to complete all my titles, but there are always exceptions (e.g. corrupted saves, grown really bored of the game, went away from it and never quite came back, etc). But no-one worries if a player doesn't complete a single player game, regardless of how good the story was - it is all about box sales at launch. A MMO, on the other hand, typically relies on continued subs / income from players, so having players drop out before they reach the 'end' (whatever that might be) is a big issue. In fact, MMOs want players to play to the end plus - you are meant to 'finish' the game, then keep playing.

MMOs and SRPGs operate to very different standards, despite having some superficial similarites.

I had this same discussion with someone from Mythic in this thread from July '06. RJCox used to be Richard from Mythic.

www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/837531#837531

ROFL

People have been saying this for over a decade, people play the mechanics of an MMO.

Modern MMOs are designed to appeal to achievers and competitive people, they're not designed for people who enjoy a good story or simple fun.

So, how about everyone stops rehashing this point and actually goes out there and makes a friggin game out of an MMO... oh wait.. that is what BioWare is doing :)

Loved the article.....and hit the nail on the head  of why war is not really fun for me anymore....and why DAoC is still up and running with enough subs to keep RvR fun

I completely agree with most of what is said in the article but not with the conclusion

[Quote]

There is hope, though. As much as I’d like to take credit for all this, it’s clear many others have come to this conclusion sooner (and over the course of a lot less columns). The best looking games at E3 took this to heart. Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic looks a heck of a lot like a cooperative single-player RPG. The narrative seems, at a glance, to be a large part of the focus. While other exciting games like All Points Bulletin and Global Agenda are much more focused on character parity and unlockable content.

[/Quote]

It is paradox that one should seek the core mechanics single player RPGs as an improvement to the MMORPG, because these mechanics are specialized to some extend on beeing... single player. 

When people want to buy an MMO, the usually do not want a single player game with a little global chat box.  Story is important, and immersion ist, too - but if you take on the Guild Wars-type of instanced storytelling, then you are bound to fail. GW did not live of the story, but of PvP, and no matter how good the story may turn out to be... if you took the same story into an single player game, it would still work better - because the expectation towards an MMO are quite different from that of an single player game.

Basically we are speaking immersion ( = instancing content to create a good storyline) vs. interaction here, and if people buy an MMO they are seeking some form of interaction (may it be socializing or of competetive nature), as opposed to someone buying an offline game.

Finding an satisfying way to combine interaction and immersion ( = "storytelling as a 4th pillar") is the real problem MMO's face today... and i do not believe instancing cn be a valid tool to achieve it. The only i can think of is the use of GM's to run live events, but that is way too expensive to do in a bigger MMO

I am waiting for SW:TOR as much as the next guy and i will buy it and play it, but unless Bioware's got an ace up it's sleeve i think they will fail on the long run.

Erm. Just my 2ct for today.

Good article, think its spot on why WAR did not become a hit.

Also Developers often fail to understand that its in the human nature to make anything we do as effective as possiball. So if you have a levlel system some people will find the best and fastes way to get thru it, and others will follow. You have a pvp grind system people will learn how it works and do what is most effective, least amount of time for the best kinds of rewards.

I personaly dont think MMOS should be built as road movies, going from point A to point B. First you level from 0-MAX then you raid, pvp from worst gear to the best gear. Now this in my book is kinda boring.

I think more Devlopers should look at the Sandbox format for MMORPGs. Let the players build the world for you, dont make it for them. Give them the tools to build towns, construct trading rutes, fight over resources. Let them live a life in your virtual world dont do a Them park becuase one day you will run out of rides.

If a developer made a Huge world and let the players be the builders and makers of it ( scary I know as you dont know what will happen) we come mush closer to how real life works, and I think that is a mush more interesting concept then Raiding or PvPing for ranks and items.

EvE is the game that comes closest to this right now, and as shown it keeps getting bigger and bigger each year, Reason for this I think is that everything is up to the players. CCP do not waste time cunstructing conflicts and Raid dungeons, The players make the content in EvE. And what you do can actually effect others. I have never understood why people play in virtual worlds that are static like WoW and War. No mather how mush you raid or how mush you pvp for gear the world will at the end of the day look and feel exacly the same. This is not true in EvE as power strugles shift, stations gets built and destroyed. and new items get manafactured and destroyed, the landscape of the game changes.

Now why not plug the holes in what EvE is bad at, Repetetive gameplay, It has some boring aspects to it I have to admit,but it lets the world belong to the players and that is more then you can say for most MMORPGS.

We need more player control in MMOS. The best sugestion would be go and look how a strategic board game works, let us Build landmarks, citys, trade hubs and let us fight over  resources and claim the land we play in and call it our own. We can fight for hundreads of years before we get tired. All real wars show us this, the 100 year war betwen France and England was based on who owned what lands and who controled the trade and who had the Power. Human nature wants to own and control. If the developers make a game that focus on this they can run it for years to come. But you have to give over the power to the players, and I think this scares many of the developers today. Because they do not know what will happen if they no longer can predict ( okey now they will be raiding this for 3 months, then they will do this and we got enough time to give out our next expansion) what the players will do in thier game.

 Very good article, I especially enjoyed the conclusion :)

I believe with the system-shock that WoW has caused, the next set of mmo's have begun dev within WoW's timeline, and have learned new ways of combatting how the genre has changed - hopefully for the good, not necessarily just focusing on WoW.

While the classic mmo style is all but dead (or only living in still active old mmos) and "player-friendly" is king, the idea of employing more single player RPG focuses to MMOs is a very interesting concept, that hopefully some mmo creators will ponder on.  Good thread in general, I'm excited for Q4 09' - Mid 2010.

Unfortunately in the end, these companies as businesses will always continue to rush to the exp bar - because it is tried & true at making money.  MMOs take so much time and money, our only hope that the giants (Bliz, EA, Square, etc...) attempt to look beyond the buck and to the forums.

Also, Khalathwyr - you sir are a true intellectual with some refreshing thoughts.  

Originally posted by Sylvene

It's about measurables.  In single person RPGs, you've got a static story line to follow - even if there are different paths through it.  The measurable is the point in that storyline.  In MMOs, you have a wide variety of choices and the measurable is your level and class.

For example:  In RPGs, arriving at a certain city measures how far you've gotten in a game.  In MMOs, you have several dozen cities to visit and that feat does not measure your advancement.

 

I think Sylvene pretty much has a grasp of what Dana was trying to say, however, I think we have to look at the whole picture and not just one little aspect of the MMORPG before saying this is why MMORPG's are broken.   MMORPG's are not like most games in that there is so much going on in them besides just  one thing.   In a single player RPG most of the time you are in pursuit of the end of the storyline the SRPG is based on(Oblivion, and a few other games, is an exception since it is a sandbox with a story tacked onto it).   In an MMORPG players maybe be following an epic tale, but they are probably also crafting, gathering resources and socializing(guild stuff and just being social) and adventuring/exploring.    So there is a lot going on in an MMORPG compared to most other types of games.

The reason Dana you found this little Litmus Test is because there is no other real well to measure our progression in 98% of the MMORPG's on the market today due to their complexity - compared to a single player RPG.   Single player RPG's are fairly linear creatures just by design and there is a beginning, middle and an end to them(99%) of the time...so naturally when you ask a person where they are in an RPG they'll say,  'Oh I am just now getting to X and about to do Y so I can move onto Z."    That is not the case in MMORPG's.

Why?

Because we're talking two different games here.   SRPG's are rarely anything like an MMORPG, the only thing they have in common is that they were both born of the same gaming system developed in the mid 70's by these two guys named Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.    

So your Litmus test is good to a point in that it really shows the difference in the games  - but it misses what is really wrong with the MMORPG genre on a whole - not with all games, in this genre, mind you, but with most.

Here is what I see the biggest problem with MMORPG's these days is - the leveling system.  That leveling system born of that game developed by two guys back in the 1970's.   See in that table top game people played they measured progress by saying, 'Yeah, I have a level 12 fighter/mage."   Ask anyone from WoW where they are in the game of WoW and they will most likely shoot back with I'm in Northrend and have X characters, one Human Paly, Night Elf Rogue, and a Night Elf Hunter all level 80.

Why?  Because there is no other real way to tell you what it is they do in the game and where they are in the game other than telling you that they are this race, this class and this level.   Just like players of the old table top games use to do.

So though you think you have figured out what the core problem of the genre is - grinding to get to level x.   That is not the problem.   The problem is the journey on the way to get to level x.   What manners of grinding hell did the players have to endure to get to level X.   That is the problem with MMORPG's today - especially those with an end game like WoW - end games revolving around PvP.   These games were suppose to be about the journey - not the end of the journey, because in an MMORPG there should be no perceivable  end.   However because of the way these games are designed, born that old table top game that is how players tend to look at these games - via leveling.

So how do we get away from this rutt that plagues this genre and get back to the journey for which these games were truly designed for - a journey of escape, entertainment, and imagination?   The old pen and paper system has to be tossed out.   Leveling has got to go.   A new system has to be designed that eliminates the "level" - eliminate the level and you've essentially eliminated the grind - depending on the player and the game.

I can give you three good MMORPG's that didn't really rely on that old table top system.   One was UO with it's skill based progression system.   Second was SWG pre-NGE with it's skill bsed progression system.   Third is EvE with it's skilled based progression system.   

When you ask someone where they were in those games they didn't say, I am an X level Z.    They would most likely say they are X and they do this in the game and this and this and a little of this and a little of that and oh and I every once in a while do this.   I rarely ever heard people mention the word grind in relation to progression or making the journey through the games I mentioned above.    The people that play those games and like them see them as a journey and not as grinds and they do not measure their advancement by level - but where they are in game and what they are doing.  

For instance in SWG pre-NGE I was a master Artisan/Dancer and I ran a cantina and a vehicle business on Tatooine in a town east of Mos Espa and was constantly in fear of being harrassed by Tusken Raiders and the Empire and I smuggled arms for the Rebellion.   Ask me what I do in WoW.   I play a level X Blood Elf Huntress.   Yep...that is what I do in WoW.

Ask me what  I do in EvE.  I am a small time miner living in the back end of nowhere trying to scratch out a living and doing my best to gather enough ISK to buy a new mining vessel so someday I might be able to start my own Corp all the while dodging raiders and pirates that seem to be on the rise.   Ask me what I do in WoW.   I play a level X Blood Elf Huntress.   LOL!

That is the difference and that is where so many of these games go wrong.   It isn't about the journey...it's about the level.    Kinda of what you were aiming at I think in your Litmus test.    In the SRPG it is about the journey, and in an MMORPG it is about the class and level.   Alot of these games have lost there way and need to get back to being about the journey and not the level.  Very few actually do that and the three I mentioned are UO, SWG preNGE and EvE got it right....98% of the others got it wrong.

Good article. Glad to see more people finally touching on what a few MMOs have been trying to push into the limelight for years. I hope it catches on (Guild Wars / Eve comes to mind).

I think some people are still missing the point, though. Even when people are playing single-player MMOs with multiple progressions / endings, they still answer the same. To be honest, very few MMOs are sandbox anyhow. For example, take WoW. Yes, you have your level progression, but you also have a very clear quest / content progression that most players follow. So instead of saying 'I'm lvl X / rank X', one could say "i'm working my way through the black temple content / gear", and still be crystal clear as to where you are in the game. The point of the article is simple almost everyone will say the former, regardless of the content. And I think the author is dead on about this. It's such a simple difference, but the amount of people who still can't see this shows how powerfully it grips us and shapes the genre as a whole.

By jove hes got it!

After reading the article i completly agree, i hadnt seen it before but yes it is the advancement, the mathematically most efficient approach.

Lets hope that the devs of the upcoming mmos have realised this indeed.

Originally posted by Pumpkinhero

Let's face it.

 

People don't want great content in MMORPGs. Of course, I'm making an over-generalization, but it is still true.

I'm just wondering, what % of players who played for example, Wrath of the Lick King, and just skiped through the text of the quests and just looked at the objectives? I did, personally. But even if you make the game without any levels and content base, some people will enjoy it and some others, will just skip through the content, do quest ASAP to advance in the content. It's going to be content grinding because people will want to cap the content as fast as possible to access the high content available to the game.

It's going to be the same problem, just in a different setting.

So is there a "true" solution?

I don't think so, humans are driven to show their worth through any means necessary, and for some, MMORPGs are it. Alright, I give it to  you that it isn't much worth, but the online world is a total different entity and growing at a breath-taking pace.

So personally, I don't believe there is a solution.

Like you mentionned, it happened with WAR.

In Darkfall, people grind weapon / archery / magic on afk players, while the afk players grind them defensive skills.

In WoW, you grind gear and then a few weeks or months later you grind the upper new set of gear.

In [insert new game name here], you grind content super fast with your new "Get to Max Content in 6 hours of Gameplay" guide, sold for 9.99$ U.S.

Yes, some people will play like that no matter what, but i think the reason that most people play like that at the moment is because that stuff just isnt fun or involving.  People dont read quesst text becuase most of the time it is generic and meaningless.  In the end its up to the players, and I think if developers find a way to make something fun and make players want to play something that the majority of players will enjoy themselves and not just grind to the cap.

Very good article!

I do believe that level grind, and a players rush for max level are ruining the MMO genre. I do think we as players need measurable progress. IMO Guild Wars found the perfect balance for doing this. Max level is 20 so there is no grind. After level 20 you spend time polishing your character capping eltie skills, and gathering max stat weapons. The entire time you are unlocking skills and equipment for PvP. After nearly 3 years of playing more traditional MMO's I realize that ArenaNet had it right so now I'm hoping they don't break it in guild wars 2

When I first started playing MMOG's back in 2001, experience grinding was one way to show how popular an online game was... it kept people online for long periods of time, and thus showed a high online population over a period of time. It was the accepted way of measuring how successful an online game was back then. However, things have changed. It now seems that the number of paid subscriptions now seems to be the measuring stick. So do we still need the grind?... perhaps, perhaps not.

I have left several online games simply because I was just so tired of the grind... pull, kill, pull, kill... Hours spent in DAoC getting a group together and then going to a pull/kill space, only to spend hours pulling and killing until we leveled or got enough coin. It was just so damn boring and a waste of my time!!!... and I have learned over the years to really value my time.

That is one reason I play EVE Online now. Skills are gained by time, not experience grinding. Still have to run missions and stuff for money and resources, but one just has to wait a period of time to get to a skill level for a particular skill. I loved it... though I find other things in EvE Online that I do not like, I really like the skill advancement. Not the best by far, but better than most out there.

What I would like to see is the whole idea of leveling and experience grinding to just go away... it is a dead animal waiting to be buried. Everytime I look at a new online game and they mention leveling, I just roll my eyes. What I would like to see is a skill advancement system that one advances in an individual skill by doing it... and not by doing something else. With a little imagination on the Dev's part, creating a system where one is not class restricted and has an long progressive skill learning process. In EVE Online, it is estimated that it would take 26 years for one to learn all the skills in the game. Again, not the best system in the world, but better than the endless experience grind... in my opinion.

Very few people can sum up the thousands of ideas that flow through my mind as I spend/burn countless hours playing a genre that I love, but at the same time feel guilty playing.

My tag name is Krityc (Critique) because I pick apart every game I play.  My friends nag on me because I always chew games apart, and the ask why I play because it sounds like I'm not having fun.  I'm enjoying myself with every comment, but it frustrates me because the genre isn't evolving.

It seems like every game that comes out with new & unique ideas fail, and the games that copy the same formula stick around.  It's time for something new and refreshing, and I'm hoping that swtor is our answer.

Interesting article.    Gave me something to think about.

When I play a game like Titan's Quest or Diablo 2 or even Fallout 3 it's true; I think about the character's level and current gear as a measure of his progress.   After the first playthrough, I don't give much thought to "Oh, I'm on chapter 3 in D2".

But when I play a story-driven game like Indigo Prophecy (aka Fahrenheit), I think about my progress in terms of where I am in the story.

Other games are kinda in the middle for me.   In Bioshock or Mass Effect, I was always aware of roughly how far along the main quest I was, but also how my gear and abilities were shaping up.  

So, in some games, I enjoy the process of becoming more powerful, and I think you are right in that this is particularly true for MMOs.     In other games, I enjoy the process of seeing where the character(s) and story lead next.    In the upcoming game Dragon's Age, I am equally looking forward to both aspects, and feel the same for the new SW:TOR mmo.   I think you're dead on that for MMOs to 'evolve', they must incorporate both these aspects.

One other difference I should mention is that in a story-driven SP game, once I've completed the story, it loses alot of replay value, except perhaps to see what would've happened if I'd made different choices.   But with the power-driven games, there seems to be more replayability; finding even better gear, taking on harder challenges, etc.    This is why I think that most MMOs go the second route.   You want your players to stick around and keep playing and paying.

Just my two cents.   Good article, good read.

Originally posted by Teala 

For instance in SWG pre-NGE I was a master Artisan/Dancer and I ran a cantina and a vehicle business on Tatooine in a town east of Mos Espa and was constantly in fear of being harrassed by Tusken Raiders and the Empire and I smuggled arms for the Rebellion.   Ask me what I do in WoW.   I play a level X Blood Elf Huntress.   Yep...that is what I do in WoW.

Ask me what  I do in EvE.  I am a small time miner living in the back end of nowhere trying to scratch out a living and doing my best to gather enough ISK to buy a new mining vessel so someday I might be able to start my own Corp all the while dodging raiders and pirates that seem to be on the rise.   Ask me what I do in WoW.   I play a level X Blood Elf Huntress.   LOL!

I liked the rest of your response but these statements are your own personal biasis showing.  You do not enjoy WoW so you only identify with your character in a surface way.  You enjoy your EVE character so you identify deeply with that character. 

In turn I could never really enjoy EVE so my character there always remained a bland empire miner who tried to get into the mission running business.  My WoW character is a  mature human mage who is obssessive about completing tasks and is an encyclopedia of usefull knowledge.  He mainly joins groups to run smaller dungeons now but is trying to find a way to join in on the bigger raids.  He is a top-notch chef and a superb fisherman. 

Because I like playing my WoW character I merged my own personality with the base aspects of the character class and race.  In EVE I never liked it enough to go that far in personalizing my character.

The basic problem with the question this article is that it asks 'Where you are?'  when it actually means 'Who you are?'.  In a single player game the Where and Who are pretty much interchangeable so one answer covers it all.  In a MMORPG the Where and Who are different animals just like in real life so the anwer is way more complex.

The second failure of the question is that it is asking for a superficial answer.  When asked "Who are you?"  people will start with the most generic identifier and then if given time an opportunity will expand on past acheivements, current goals and future aspirations.  By limiting himself to a short answer the author is cutting off any meaningfull discussiona about the topic.

So if the people asked were asked to elaborate it might go like this:

Single Player RPG:  I am now in the city of X.  I already rescued the merchant from the bandits and found the Sword of Might.  I am currently exploring the sewers looking for the Necromancer.  When I defeat him I will be able to go after the Dark Lord.

MMORPG:  I am now a level X human mage.  I used to raid when I was level 50 but now do small instances.  I am a miner and blacksmith I just defeated the boss of the Dark Dungeon and got myself a Sword of Might.  Later this week I will try to do The Sewers and kill the Necromancer.  When I level more I hope to join a raid to kill the Dark Lord.

While there's rarely a single explanation for failure, and WAR certainly had many different weak points, this column is precisely the kind of preaching we need if we are to get rid of the strait jacket that is the D&D mmo heritage.

The analysis are allready there, the technology advances and the market expands. I commend Massey for doing his part with regards to enlightenment and attitude.

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by Sylvene

It's about measurables.  In single person RPGs, you've got a static story line to follow - even if there are different paths through it.  The measurable is the point in that storyline.  In MMOs, you have a wide variety of choices and the measurable is your level and class.

For example:  In RPGs, arriving at a certain city measures how far you've gotten in a game.  In MMOs, you have several dozen cities to visit and that feat does not measure your advancement.

 

 

...

  Very few actually do that and the three I mentioned are UO, SWG preNGE and EvE got it right....98% of the others got it wrong.

I'd add Asheron's Call 1 to that list. Turbine didn't have the notoriety that Sony did back then which is in part why so many people went to EQ over AC. People go with what they are familiar with, for good or bad. AC1 defintely deserves more face time and recognition than what mainstream gaming media gives.

Originally posted by gnlLucid

Also:  Gamers play games.  People without real jobs go to gaming conventions and TALK about gaming. :)

I go to gaming conventions because my real job is making MMOs.   Sorry but you have no idea what your talking about.

I think in all this searching for the litmus test for an MMO people tend to overlook the examples that are already out there.

SoE with EverQuest has made a lot of mistakes, and they have made a lot of people mad, hating SoE is almost mandatory for any MMO gamer it seems….

No matter though, how much you hate SoE, EverQuest is one of the most loved MMOs in history. Maybe if the internet was huge in 1999 as it was when WoW came out they would have ten million subs, then again, maybe not.

What sets EQ apart from any other MMO is the community, lets face it, this can make or break the game just as much as the devs. When I logged into EQ I was Beowoulfe, I did not have alts until years after I started playing, save for when I made my trader. I logged in, I did not log in my toon as you do WoW, as much work as EQ was, it made a whole new world that for better or worse immersed you until that was your new persona.

WoW maybe fun and exciting, my have its hard parts, and even some hard core raiders, but nothing compares to when you are running through Kithicor and realize…crap its dark, you want to stop and turn around, but that could mean death, instead you hope you can get to High Hold or the Commonlands before the creatures and ghouls of the dark get you.

EQ had solo spots, when my wizard received his snares and pillar spells I did some quad kiting, but overall groups were it. While grinding can suck, and it does, killing mobs in a group, living or dying, or training the zone makes for some great times, good friends and a better community than running form NPC to NPC grabbing ten quests and gaining some levels. When two guilds raced for mobs enemies were made and alliances were formed.

This camping and raiding mobs, using first in force mentality did one major task that helped EQ, it slowed progression. Now before you roll your eyes, this is the single best benefit for devs, it gives them time to fix the game, and make quality expansions. Think about it, how long did it take to beat PoP and previous expansions, compared to GoD and beyond. With everything being instanced you can try every 24 hours or so and not worry about being there to beat uberguild01, guilds move through crap like crazy now a days, the hardest part now is keeping people playing EQ after 10 years and having the manpower to accomplish raids.

EQ was immersive because like in real life you had to rely on each other, and all were scared of dying, it just was not permanent like in real life, but the penalties and the resulting corpse run was severe enough, that you did not want to have a group wipe deep in the bowels of Lower Guk, or trying to get your guild back into the Plane of Fear to get your gear, especially if the first break in failed.

The new game should be EQ…lite….not EQII, Vanguard or even WoW, take the best of EQ, no instances, or very few, make people work together and add something for the solo player or someone who does not have much time that day.

As long as you want to quest your levels away, solo the mobs that you do get to kill we will not have the MMO we are looking for.

Dana said it best when he said “Why not make the journey fun” players will as Dana stated do the most mathematical efficient method to progress, its up to the developers to slow them, but at the same time make the game enjoyable, where guilds and groups live and die by the sword.

Yeah I think we've been through this with Dana already, its a good follow up on the previous article though.

I've always hated the grind perspective in any game. And as long as game had levels it always had grind. I guess those 2 just go along no matter what you do.

I think that current MMO developers fail to research the gaming market appropriately and thats why we have to play the same template of the MMO game in every new product. I am sick to be honest after so many years without any new touch in MMOs. I hold dire hopes for SWToR and am enjoying single player games right now more than anything else.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by qombi

 Enjoyed your article. I like the idea of unlockable content myself. The funny thing is I have seen unlockable content so to speak in an old game called Everquest before. You had to get keyed for certain raids and you have to also do raids in sequence to get the necessary gear for the next. I loved this design myself. I think you are right on though on though. 

I would like to see a game with no levels and progression was just unlocking content all the way through. You do this to unlock this, so on and so on. This can be accomplished with gear as well as in my example. WoW had "keyed" content as well at first. Thanks for the article.

 

I agrre also. EQ2 had most zones done so you had to unlock them too, but they took it away because people complained.

But there is more fun things than gaining loot and level up, at least some MMOs should focus more on that.

I agree with you, EQ2 has submitted itself to whimper whiners. I think the main problem with MMOs, is they listen too much to the whiners on the forums. I blame WoW for this because it was just too easy (at least I am told) to level up. When EQ1 and EQ2 first launched, EQ1 was very hard and unforgiving, EQ2 was hard compared to everything else. Now I can get from 1 -50 in a week and that is not playing hard. The only way the MMO industry will advance is stop making WoW clones or changing their game to be WoW.

Originally posted by TdogSkal

Originally posted by gnlLucid

Also:  Gamers play games.  People without real jobs go to gaming conventions and TALK about gaming. :)

 

I go to gaming conventions because my real job is making MMOs.   Sorry but you have no idea what your talking about.

You’re a very low percentage, a rarity. For the most part, he is right. I would love to go to the SOE fan faire once. But I would have to take vacation and spend my money to go there, just like I would if I was going to E3.

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Originally posted by Gkarn

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Originally posted by TdogSkal

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Originally posted by gnlLucid

Also:  Gamers play games.  People without real jobs go to gaming conventions and TALK about gaming. :)

---

 
I go to gaming conventions because my real job is making MMOs.   Sorry but you have no idea what your talking about.

---

 
You’re a very low percentage, a rarity. For the most part, he is right. I would love to go to the SOE fan faire once. But I would have to take vacation and spend my money to go there, just like I would if I was going to E3.

---

But there are still a lot of hippies who dress in capes and musketeer hats and people without jobs :).

And by the way, has anyone noticed how weak and lame is what developers are trying to focus their attention on and attract players in with? Especially the game with PvP content. I mean everything is focused now on "COOL" and "BAD ASS". Doesn't it already speak for itself that developers want to mostly attract underaged idiots, sorry for being harsh? I don't mean all kids, I mean those who has enough brain to only like violence, blood and porn. Why does everyone need to look like ninja? Is "COOL" actually so important in MMO? I mean as farther we go as bloodier MMOs become. Who could think about disembowlement before? Now its as more blood during the fight as better. Limbs are flying, heads exploding... WooW, COOOOL... *roll eyes*

I think AoC is a good example of the lasting value of "COOL" and "BAD ASS" since that game was trying to capture the interest with mostly those features. Game was cool and you felt very "bad ass" by cutting heads off the mobs and doing all kind of other bloody fatalities. I guess after all it gets boring to soak yourself in blood and the "COOL" and "BAD ASS" is not really as important if game developers plan to capture the gamers interest for longer than 50 levels. Fable 2 is a good example that games can still be very fun and popular even without puddles of blood and poked our eyes with pieces of someone else's smashed brain all over your body.

How many DAoC players levelled a toon to 24, kitted it out in full over charged SC masterpiece gear and then /xpoff /rpoff and lived in Thidranki?

Stop progession, start the fun!

You guys need to realize you are the now the MMO minority.  The majority doesn't sign up for forums, doesn't RP, and doesn't want to waste a bunch of time leveling.  They are much more interested in what items they have then what part of the story they are in.  They don't really play single player RPGs because they would rather play online FPS games.  If the game takes to long to give them their fun fix they are just going to move on to a different game.  These are not the people that make friends online, they have their real friends and play with them in game.  These are the majority of paying customers now and if a game doesn't get them they are dead, because it is very clear that most 'serious' MMORPG fans have their preferred game.  It is much much much easier to design a fast leveling, cool item having, PvP focusing MMOLite game then design a game with this great aspect of EG, that innovative aspect of DAoC,  that one amazing aspect of AC1, and so on.  The point is unless you can create the perfect RPG fans MMORPG you are going to have to aim for the most inviting and easy game possible.  And yes it comes down to money, welcome to the world.  I know it is oh so cynical to say but most of the companies need to make some money by attracting fans.  Clearly WoW has the most fans, has made Blizzard the most money, and every head of every company wants their new title to make that much money and I am willing to bet that 9 out of 10 of those heads aren't trolling forums wondering what RPG lovers want in their games, they are just looking at the numbers.  So until one of us makes enough money that we can blow it making the worlds best MMORPG we are going to have to put up with mediocre MMOGs that you can RP in if you want.  Now I can go back to trolling.

Well I am EQ2 raider and I measure progress via raid progression. Raid mobs get increasingly difficult and you can't kill the hard ones before you kil lthe easier ones whether it simply lock you out of the area or you need to kill the easy guy enough times to get the equipment for a bunch of the raiders.

So if you asked me I would have said we are working on gynok is ToMC and mynzok in palace. Takes most guilds MONTHS to progress through these bosses except for 1-2 more hardcore guilds on each server which already have it all on farm status.

EQ2 has realized most people who play their game frequently raid, so they just put almost all the content at the level cap every expansion. Its almost to the point where they could just not have levels and just make it equipment and encounter progression based. Any content added that is not for the cap is mainly there to speed/ease leveling to the cap. In kunark they did add a new race and town but it was also the quickest and easiest way to get through 1-20. 1-79 is basic training for your class essentially, just long enough to make you look at all your skills, ask around how to do some stuff better and nuances of combat before you get to 80 and start 'really' playing. They even added a raid to accomadate 12 people instead of 24 (still added a 24 person raid though) and are doing the same thing with the next game update.

I completely and  100% agree  with him, which is why Ive dreamed of a no lvls game but something based on how much practice you get at something. Gonna be harder to swing that huge sword if youve only swung sticks around your entire life kinda thing .  You can still use that giant sword  though and as you use it more and more youll get used to it youll get stronger and master it. Need mechanics like that in a MMO not progress bars limiting you to grinds.

The game I play doesn't have levels, it has skills, and they don't show your skill level, so when you talk about someone it's always, 'that guy is a great warrior', not, 'that guy is level 50'. You know you are skilled when you do things better than you did before and no one complains about unfair level differences when they get beat... they just praise the victor. There's no grind at all. You live, work, craft, build, adventure... it's completely open. You don't need quests for that. You just need the coded tools for your character to have a rich and full life with a real impact on the world (which is freaking massive, BTW). You don't need great graphics either, because after you get over the graphics it's all just about what you want to accomplish and whether or not the game supports that goal. In the end it's all about your imagination, not some cartoon that does more to detract from the feel of the world than add to it.

Where am I at in the game? Well, I'm one of the better warriors in Brygga, but have no idea what my skill level is in terms of numbers. I just finished a shop to sell items crafted from rarer metals that I pan in dangerous lands from the streams others have a hard time getting to and therefore are richer since the gems and metals (gold, silver, mithril, etc) deplete over time and regen very slowly. The easily reachable areas are quickly depleted. I am now beginning a small fort out there so I can have a base of operations for NPC hirelings that will do some of the panning for me, as well as guard the fort. I also am helping to build roads to ease travel into the north where the other main player race lives. They have things we want to trade for and it's a really long and slow journey right now without good roads.

So where am I? I don't know... but I'm having fun there and it's never a grind. ;)

Originally posted by PDXCatalyst

The game I play doesn't have levels, it has skills, and they don't show your skill level, so when you talk about someone it's always, 'that guy is a great warrior', not, 'that guy is level 50'. You know you are skilled when you do things better than you did before and no one complains about unfair level differences when they get beat... they just praise the victor. There's no grind at all. You live, work, craft, build, adventure... it's completely open. You don't need quests for that. You just need the coded tools for your character to have a rich and full life with a real impact on the world (which is freaking massive, BTW). You don't need great graphics either, because after you get over the graphics it's all just about what you want to accomplish and whether or not the game supports that goal. In the end it's all about your imagination, not some cartoon that does more to detract from the feel of the world than add to it.

Where am I at in the game? Well, I'm one of the better warriors in Brygga, but have no idea what my skill level is in terms of numbers. I just finished a shop to sell items crafted from rarer metals that I pan in dangerous lands from the streams others have a hard time getting to and therefore are richer since the gems and metals (gold, silver, mithril, etc) deplete over time and regen very slowly. The easily reachable areas are quickly depleted. I am now beginning a small fort out there so I can have a base of operations for NPC hirelings that will do some of the panning for me, as well as guard the fort. I also am helping to build roads to ease travel into the north where the other main player race lives. They have things we want to trade for and it's a really long and slow journey right now without good roads.

So where am I? I don't know... but I'm having fun there and it's never a grind. ;)

Thanks for posting a link to this game. I'm certainly going to try this out. The premise of this game as seen on the home page is what the graphical MMOs should be aiming for, at least some of them. It's kind of how UO was.

Games will start moving away from the level grind. Darkfall has recently stepped into that area and is conceptually very good although the dev team is too small to do it justice and there is a strange attitude that suggests that the players are an annoyance who get in the way of the dev team doing a really good job. Mortal Online looks better and is purer in concept and will very much be in the 'Oblivion' style. There will be no levels, gear will not be very important, and player skill will be the most important factor - not the hours a person has sat in front of the screen.

As for The Old Republic, what a disappointment that it will be another level grind in the WoW fashion. I thought Bioware might be a bit more innovative. Instead they will copy Blizzard. What is the point in Bioware putting in a great story to assist the level grind when most players will not read anything as it will just slow down their progression through the levels. This game will not be about the journey - it will be about an end game that may or may not exist. All the effort to make the journey fun will be wasted because there are levels and people see this as a gauge to their awesomeness.

I love Star Wars, and wouldn't it be great if we had a world that we could move through without thought to level, and only thought to how good do we feel. Are my skills - both as a real person and as a bunch of numbers - good enough to take that on? Do I feel confident to travel in this sector, rather than I am not allowed to travel in that sector because my level isn't high enough. Dana is correct in that I never once worried about level in KoToR (were there any?), but Dana is kidding himself if he thinks that just because Bioware is going to make a good story that people won't worry about level ihn ToR.

Anyway, I will be playing Mortal Online (Beta on 29 June) with PAGAN, and I won't have to worry about levels, where I can and can't go. That journey will be great and will have no end. 

Originally posted by Teala

That is the difference and that is where so many of these games go wrong.   It isn't about the journey...it's about the level.    Kinda of what you were aiming at I think in your Litmus test.    In the SRPG it is about the journey, and in an MMORPG it is about the class and level.   Alot of these games have lost there way and need to get back to being about the journey and not the level.  Very few actually do that and the three I mentioned are UO, SWG preNGE and EvE got it right....98% of the others got it wrong.

To an extent, Lineage 2 did this as well by virtue of the ridiculous level grind making gaining the cap virtually unatainable for the average player.  

My experience was that I had a 'main' who was my highest level that I used for pvp and socializing and spent a great deal of time on my merchant character travelling from city to city, buying low and selling high, and when i wasnt doing that I was working on gathering and crafting to make better kit for my 'main' to better facilitate pvping and socializing...

You can see how it turns into the cocaine psa from the 80's, lol.

Personally, I dont mind levels, it is a carrot on the stick that keeps more people in the game.  TBH, I would like to see a game company with the bollocks to develop a game with infinite levels.  Develop and MMO where there is no 'end game'.  Let the minmaxers do their thing, but with an infinitely growing and disparate cost per kill/gain ratio.

Fact is, if the activities that your doing in the game are fun (pve, pvp, crafting, exploring, diplomacy) then gaining another level should be a feather in your cap, not the end all, be all.

I disagree with this articles, i think if u dont like how a mmo works, feel, play, or whatever, just dont play it, mmos dont have to adapt, but players have to adapt. and if u asked me that question i would had answered a death knight, right now attempting yogg-saron, thats storyline. its stupid to ask for the level, if you play a game 'seriously' its obvious your already max level, and what you been doing is farm content, go threw content, explore new content. levels is just a ladder to rank content.

you've got it all wrong.

and what will happen when a play levelup in your new 'system' its bul%$^@^

there wont be no more of:

<UncleTom> DING!!!

<pino> GRATS!

<booba> zomg already?

or....

12:34 <Yogg-Saron dies>

12:34 <UncleTOM> YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...........

see the similarity? here WE ALL FREAKED OUT WHEN WE LEVELED AND WHEN WE KILLED CONTENT!

dont try to break what has been working perfecly for over 20 years or more of mmo history or even just RPGs.

 It's somewhat of a silly comparison. In FFXI I can be anywhere on 5 different main quest lines: I can be rank 1-10 in one of three home nations, I can be at a specific mission in chains of promathia or tales of aht urghan, and I can be so in one or more of 3 Wings of the Goddess nation quests as well as the main quest line. This isn't counting things like assault or campaign rank.

 I can reach cap in up to 20 different jobs on the same character. There's a reason why we use level for the most part, it's an easy general shorthand. When we talk about specific missions and quests, then we talk about story.

In single player MMO's, the only real shorthand is the single main quest line.

Originally posted by mrw0lf

IMO

It was obvious during the design and beta stages of war when they anounced (and fans cheered) that there would be seperate levels for pvp and pve and individual ways to to level them that this was always going to be the outcome.

I don't think the litmus test in itself is actually relevent and all that really happened was the author seemed to have a eurica moment when he suddenly realised that with levels in a game, a massive portion of the playerbase will always take the course of least resistance. Now this is not meant as an insult but that really is no revelation.

How people describe their current position in a game may be an indication on how people view their progress and maybe even a slight indication as to how they play their game but it most certainly doesn't indicate whether the game is good or people enjoy it or if the journey to end game (and the end game itself) is worth it. MMO's have (or should have, which is why its quite interesting someone bought up LotRO) multiple options when progressing their chars through an MMO this is much more likely to be why they use level as indication as telling someone about the quest they are on or part of the game doesn't tell anything as the other person may never have even been there or experienced it.

I am not deliberately trying to pick holes in the atricle but the conclusion to me also doesn't hold true either in practice nor logic. The games that are used to pad the argument, such as TOR, which are touted as being primarily story focused and driven is only subject to each gamers preferences and opinions on games. Is it a good approach to a game? O/c it is people like a good story and canon but it is not going to save the game if the mechanics and end game are not also to the gamers preference.

I don't believe it is about taking a single player game and basically making it function as an MMO, an MMO is a completely different animal and people playing them have entirely different expectations. Few people hate levels more than me but that for me is more due to the fake functionality they bring to a game. But it doesn't change players methods of progression in general, they will still use web sites to skim through content and they will always take the easiest route all the time there is some form of competition to end game.

To quote my favorite beer commercial, "Brilliant!"

I think Dana had an RvR hangover from getting stomped by the opposing side the night before and is picking on Warhammer because of it.

You are a fool if you think WAR is failing because of your theory and I quote:

"The moment advancement became an intricate part of RvR, players did what they will always do. They sought out the most efficient means of advancement and suddenly what was once an epic, eternal WAR became two sides looking for the most mathematically efficient means possible to advance their Renown Rank.

And as we all known, that’s when fun becomes a grind… and Warhammer Online has been bleeding subscribers ever since."

Read any of the forums related to Warhammer, WAR is failing for the simple fact that the classes are completely unbalanced and pleas for balance are going unanswered. Or rather Mythic isn't taking the corrective steps necessary, to at the very least ease their subscribers minds that the changes are forthcoming. It's that simple!

While a lot of people do get altitis most people I find stick with 1 or 2 classes from MMO to MMO, specifically the mainstream and those most likely to jump ship. When they hop from one MMO to the other they usually jump into the first class that's familiar to them. I've seen it time and time again. Unfortunately with WAR, you run into a game where said person logs on to the game for the first time and jumps into said class only to find out said class in their opinion is significantly gimped. While that person may try out other classes within this new game, they will eventually out of frustration, either go back to their previous game or jump to the next game with similar said class. Doing this all the while until they find the game where the class that they choose to play is to their liking.

Will some people switch within the same game to another class, most likely an OP class?  Sure, they will!  They'll try it out or test the water, if you will, but it won't last.  You've heard the saying, "to each their own"? Certain people are drawn to certain classes for a reason, because it fits their personality type!

To quote an earlier poster, Hokie, "I dont want to be a player in a predetermined story. I want to BE the story." 99.9% of the time that involves the player or protagonist playing the class that they initially pictured in their mind, not the class they were forced into playing due to imbalance.

WAR to me is a lot of fun, but then again I play a Bright Wizard! If you were to scan the Bright Wizard class forums I can assure you that rarely will you see anyone threatening to unsub due to being unhappy with the game. However, if you were to jump over to the Shadow Warrior forums they are overrun with posts of unhappy campers, many that are leaving and those that have left. It's not Rocket Science. Subscriber is thinking about leaving game because they are frustrated...subscriber posts message in forums that they are unhappy and planning to leave game...subscriber leaves game. We live in a, wear your heart on your sleeve society.  Ninety percent of the time people will let you know exactly why they are upset, one hundred percent of the time when it involves their money (as P2P's do).

I've said it before and I'll say it again, WAR to me has tons of potential. It's obvious to me that someone over at Mythic is making poor decision after poor decision (I'd go into detail as to why I feel that way, but I'm tired of typing). If I was in a decision making position over at Mythic I guarantee WAR would be more successful than it's current state.

Originally posted by Hokie

I dont know Dana, I think you dont get Warhammer Online. You seem to be taking some potshots at it.

You say its all about renown, well yeah of course it is. Its like faulting WoW for its instances. Theres nothing wrong with renown.

And they've done some great things.

Gone are the endless runs thru a dungeon waiting for that class drop item and hoping that you win that roll . Yes there is still endless runs hitting keep after keep, jumping from zone to zone waiting for a flip. But at the end of it all you WILL get that item you've been wanting so bad. Influence rewards is one of the most ingenious things (along with PQ's) that WAR has contributed to the MMO genre.

 

And leveling thru rvr (pvp), you say it ruined the game. I think its obvious that a pvp game isnt for you.

Hell, I get pissed I cant level my toon thru rvr only, I have to actually take quests to advance.

Just recently Ive been lucky enough that Ive found a server that I can advance thru rvr only, and my god its the most fun Ive had in gaming in a really long time. I'd rather pit my wits against a human player over a scripted NPC any day.

 

And ruining the game by "making the journey fun". WTF is up with that statement. The most fun I had in WoW was leveling my hunter from 1-60, my mage from 1-60. I hated the repetitiveness of the instances (the whole scripted thing).

"Okay were on the second boss, mage you stand there, warrior you stand there and remember to taunt, blah, blah, blah."

The journey was so much better than reaching the destination.

 

Umm calling MMO's niche genre...LOL

Dude, the average MMO player repurchases the game every tthree months (if you put it into the perspective of single player game pricing).

Lets do WoW as an example. I know people that have been playing for 2+ years. In that time they have repurchases the box value of an average PC/console game 7 times. How many people do you know that will purchase the same single player game again every 3 months?

As a matter of fact I'd even go so far as to say MMO's are killing the single player PC gaming industry. I wouldnt call that niche.

And waiting for a game that doesnt use levels as a progress bar, a golden age.

Do you have any experience of MMO gaming outside of the Big-3 of Sony/Mythic/Blizzard? (sorry for the jab)

I said it a long time ago on EVE's forums. "CCP are trailblazers". And in my opinion they dont get the recognition for the ground breaking they did. You are a good example of that. There is a five year old game that fits your Golden Age criteria, and not once was it mentioned.

The truth is not having levels to measure your progress scares alot of people.

 

I seen this post as very negative, written by a person who hasnt weaned themselves off of the WoW teat, who has a hard time accepting something that isnt viewed as the norm by 10m people.

Innovation isnt bad, and stumbling along the way isnt reason enough to point a finger and cry "FAIL!".
 

 

On a side note. The way you described SW:ToR has me worried.

I dont want to be a player in a predetermined story. I want to BE the story.

 

 

 

Needed to quote this also as I whole-heartedly agree.  You Sir are a gentlemen and a scholar! 

I really thought you were headed somewhere that I could agree with. Then you said WAR had RvR, and you thought it was fun. RvR is not BGs. WAR RvR is nothing like DAoC. One is epic, one is easymode. 

My brother and I were talking last night about how WAR really let us down. I made the comment that what really hurt it was even a monkey could RvR in that game, and be successful. WAR was just plain not fun, not immersive, and lacked community that a MMO needs to thrive.

Really nice column. I never really thought about the level system as the enemy before, but now I realize how much it detracted from my gaming experience. Always worried about getting the next level so I can get the new abilities/equipment that I stop enjoying the game itself. I think I'd love to play a MMO without levels, might bring back my intrerest big time like no other MMO has kept since Asheron's Call.

I totally agree with your article Dana, especially in regards to WAR.  In some respect, you can apply the same logic to late DAOC, when epic battles were pretty much gone and all that was left was grinding RPs so you could get in your guild's 8-man "A-team" rather than living off the scraps.

Top quality article

Sad thing is that we will still see 5 years of MMOs with nothing but lvls...

There is one thing that alot of ppl seem to forget tho... MMORPG is NOT the same as RPG.  So.... why does every single Pay to play MMO have exactly the same crappy chat windows ?   Not that MMO games should be chatting rooms.. but still...

I have played  many MMOs for long time... The only thing they had in comon in the end was that I felt I wasted alot of time by playing them.   But still I met alot of nice ppl while playing - even tho I met 10 times the number of jerks while at it..  And... quite few of the jerks became friends... and quite few of the friends became jerks...

I myself support a game that is about the journey...  But they journey has to be worth it.  Thats where alot of MMOs fail.  And instead of a real journey you end up with 80 ppl afk in Allatec Valley to get gear....  And destroy the actual multiplayer content of the game while at it.

Lesson learned for many old school MMO players is...  PPL are jerks  - Its a game.  So... dont bother to play it diffrently. 

Excellent article.  Well said, well written. 

I honestly couldn't agree more with the message you delivered in this article. 

The author talks about the mistakes made by the Warhammer developers and yet can't figure out that he is taking a portion of the MMO industry and attempting to pawn it off  as representative of the entire Industry.

Dana, you need to get out more.  Your complaint is directed at the EQ / Wow clones, which, while making up a good portion of the industry do not represent the entirety of it.

There are very successful games that avoid your problem entirely.  The first one that comes to mind is Eve.  UO is another that did not have your problem.  There are others more recent in this category and some that will be releasing in the next year or so.

As to Star Wars, the Old Republic, they are also stuck in the character class and level rut.  Whether they can overcome this huge handicap we will just have to wait and see.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

The author talks about the mistakes made by the Warhammer developers and yet can't figure out that he is taking a portion of the MMO industry and attempting to pawn it off  as representative of the entire Industry.

Dana, you need to get out more.  Your complaint is directed at the EQ / Wow clones, which, while making up a good portion of the industry do not represent the entirety of it.

There are very successful games that avoid your problem entirely.  The first one that comes to mind is Eve.  UO is another that did not have your problem.  There are others more recent in this category and some that will be releasing in the next year or so.

As to Star Wars, the Old Republic, they are also stuck in the character class and level rut.  Whether they can overcome this huge handicap we will just have to wait and see.

I didn't get that Dana was saying there weren't any (of course I may be wrong) but instead that it seems the larger developer houses who are most capable of making a game at a fairly high quality (I know, but don't try to laugh too hard at that) seem to have horse blinders on and continue to stay in that rut. They then throw around words like "next gen" and innovative when they only are changing from red paint to blue.

"Next gen" or "innovative" would be, in my opinion and I doubt I'm the only one, developing a new basic mechanics systems or trying an update of systems like those in UO or AC. Most games out of these houses now have the EQ basic system and only vary up the "sprinkles" on that vanilla ice cream.

Originally posted by steuss

Very good points. Its too bad WoW is so successful. B/c of it, it will be hard to make games where 'levels' are not the focus.

 

I like your idea, and I think you're right on.

 

Thanks to the Motion controllers and the natal, debuted at E3, I think you'll see in some near future the inclusion of these devices in a MMO setting. Your character could tie movements, individualized to specific spells and combat manuvers, where where you HIT makes the difference. YOu could have specific gesutres that have to be learned and mastered in the correct fashion to produce spells. The limits are endless.

tw!

I am still reading the whole post but i cant let that statement go un opposed.

WOW can hardly be blamed for levels being the easy way out for developers.

levels are simply left over form the days of Table top RPGs and have stuck around due to there usefulness in designing content and balance.

I can't say I like leveling but it is hardly and invention of WOW and more that WOW is perpetuating its ussgae.

Now I will continue to read the other 78 comments.

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by Sylvene

It's about measurables.  In single person RPGs, you've got a static story line to follow - even if there are different paths through it.  The measurable is the point in that storyline.  In MMOs, you have a wide variety of choices and the measurable is your level and class.

For example:  In RPGs, arriving at a certain city measures how far you've gotten in a game.  In MMOs, you have several dozen cities to visit and that feat does not measure your advancement.

 

AC1 was fantasic It more than any gmae made me not care about level and there was no end game. There was a monthly story arc that progresses that gave people the feel of a static world.

 

Whole towns were razed to the ground for the sake of story.

Other games are unchanging boring worlds by comparison to AC 1

 

AC was fantastic.
 

...

  Very few actually do that and the three I mentioned are UO, SWG preNGE and EvE got it right....98% of the others got it wrong.

I'd add Asheron's Call 1 to that list. Turbine didn't have the notoriety that Sony did back then which is in part why so many people went to EQ over AC. People go with what they are familiar with, for good or bad. AC1 defintely deserves more face time and recognition than what mainstream gaming media gives.

 i pay City of Heroes (and champions online) and really dont measure myself by my level but by what im doing, I'm a friking superhero!

Now i'm off to punch Space Fachists in the face.

Originally posted by mudvayne819

I disagree with this articles, i think if u dont like how a mmo works, feel, play, or whatever, just dont play it, mmos dont have to adapt, but players have to adapt. and if u asked me that question i would had answered a death knight, right now attempting yogg-saron, thats storyline. its stupid to ask for the level, if you play a game 'seriously' its obvious your already max level, and what you been doing is farm content, go threw content, explore new content. levels is just a ladder to rank content.

 

you've got it all wrong.

 

and what will happen when a play levelup in your new 'system' its bul%$^@^

 

there wont be no more of:

 

<UncleTom> DING!!!

<pino> GRATS!

<booba> zomg already?

 

or....

 

12:34 <Yogg-Saron dies>

12:34 <UncleTOM> YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...........

 

see the similarity? here WE ALL FREAKED OUT WHEN WE LEVELED AND WHEN WE KILLED CONTENT!

 

dont try to break what has been working perfecly for over 20 years or more of mmo history or even just RPGs.

Just a couple things I wanted to mention about this, 1st of all, no one is saying that EVERY mmo should become like EVE or Fable, but it gets old that there are so few that aren't what everyone has begun calling a "WoW clone". 2nd, it won't change people being excited about killing content, in fact it makes them more excited about it because they wont have already killed Forest Brown Bear 100 times, and still have 100 more to go before their quest is done and they can get a new pair of boots and a few exp points. Even at end game in WoW, what is there to do but farm dungeons, farm arena points, farm honor points, farm crafting/AH items, or farm dailies? And don't go saying that I just haven't played WoW enough, I played it from the day it came out to just a few months ago. It isn't a bad game like many people say, it's a well polished, fun game, it would just be nice to see some mmos that are different enough that when I play them I don't get the feeling that I'm playing WoW all over again. Not to mention not everyone enjoys just killing one mob after another, just to have them spawn again a few minutes later so that we can kill them again.

I'm really hoping that one of the new mmos coming out can break this safetly harness chaining mmos to levels and grind. I'm very hopeful for Global Agenda, it has a solid formula that has worked for many single player games, and hopefully they can successfully implement it into an mmo. Also, I've been keeping track of Mortal Online for some time now. It's skills based system looks like it will have some fun unlockable content based on your combination of skills, and it has some other excellent ideas. My main worry with MO is that they will skimp on the content and just become another Darkfail. I haven't taken a look at the KotOR mmo, but from the little I've seen it also has some good potential to break the mmo genre away from the "WoW clone" safety harness.

 I think personally that current day MMOG's are their own enemy.

They are mainstream, but the mainstream way of thinking are killing MMOG's that try and do things just a little differently. Gaining equipment, levels and such things have become too easy. Everyone has access to everything, which just makes the achivement bland and sour. MMOG's are pacing themselves very very hard and the studioes behind the games have problems keeping up with that pace, which causes people to abandon the game.

Everything feels more or less the same, and yes I blame you World of Warcraft :)

Originally posted by Alex24

Originally posted by Sylvene

It's about measurables.  In single person RPGs, you've got a static story line to follow - even if there are different paths through it.  The measurable is the point in that storyline.  In MMOs, you have a wide variety of choices and the measurable is your level and class.

For example:  In RPGs, arriving at a certain city measures how far you've gotten in a game.  In MMOs, you have several dozen cities to visit and that feat does not measure your advancement.

 

Yeah, but couldn't a MMORPG be built that had the same advancement feel as that single player RPG?  If you get to that city, you've made it to a certain level.  Like, without ports, someone who gets to Shatterath has to be at least 58, to make a WoW analogy?

I think in a way FFXI accomplishes this. Even though leveling *is* important in XI.. reaching or unlocking certain areas is definitely a measure of progress.

Getting to Jeuno for the first time, for example. Most people go there at level 20.. but getting level 20 isn't the accomplishment itself. Getting to Jeuno means you can now get your chocobo license, which takes traveling to a whole new level (can travel farther in less time, no aggro while riding, etc.).. Jeuno also happens to be the access point to 3 other areas... Qufim Island, and then 2 others, including either Rolanberry Fields, Batallia Downs or Sauromugue Champaign - depending on which direction you came from).

After that, you have getting Sky access to look forward to, which is another achievement that unlocks a whole new area of gameplay. Then there's Tavnazian Archipelago, another new region with lots of content. Beyond that, there's "Sea"... and so on. You tell someone "I finally got access to Sea!" and they know exactly what that means, what you had to accomplish to get there, and why it's significant.

In a way, when I think about it, FFXI is full of those sorts of mini-milestones to reach... both those set by the game for everyone, and those set by players for themselves. Job and level are discussed, but when I think about it, people really tend to speak in terms of specific accomplishments in FFXI. Levels tend to be discussed only in what they unlock for the player and, so, certain levels are emphasized... and again, people understand why when you tell them. As one example, if you tell them you hit level 40 Black Mage, they're likely going to know the significance of that... You learn Warp II - a very useful spell, indeed... As one other, getting to level 30 on Thief is significant because you get access to Trick Attack at that level... an ability that when combined with "Sneak Attack", makes for very powerful attacks, but also very useful for placing aggro where it's wanted/needed in a fight, etc.

Another example is specific battles... Tell someone you defeated Alexander, and - so long as they know who that is - they're going to understand the accomplishment in that and, of course, what it means about your progress in the game.

The examples go on and on...

But in all, I agree with Dana's article. Many MMOs and, by extension, gamers have reduced MMOs down to filling up xp bars in the most "mathematically efficient" way... and any content that doesn't contribute to that equation is typically ignored.

The trouble is, developers have also gotten lazy to where the majority of what they call "Quests" are little more than fetch-and-kill routines. A player isn't given the opportunity to become engrossed in the content along the way, because there's nothing engrossing about collecting 50 wolf fangs, or killing 30 wild boars. In those cases, the quests merely become part of the equation in the players' race to level cap.

In a way, it kinda raises a very "chicken or egg" type question...

Did the players put most focus on leveling as a result of a lack of interesting content from the developers?
Or...
Did the developers reduce the content to mere fetch-and-kill routines due to players reducing quests down to little more than another way to fill up their xp bar, not bothering to read or become at all engaged in the story behind it?

Either way... it's a cyclical pattern, I think... one side continuously feeds the other, all in the name of "faster leveling".

I've brought this up in another thread, but I think it bears repeating here...
Why should a developer expend the time and money to create an elaborate storyline with interesting challenges requiring thought or strategy when players aren't going to read the story, and will merely go to some online guide to walk through it as fast as possible anyway so they can collect their reward and move on to the next one?

I think it could also be looked at in terms of how so many MMO players now believe reaching end-game is the only meaningful goal in the game. So, in that light, getting there as fast as possible is key, and what level they are is their measure of progress.

So perhaps if some other developers can find a way to take the focus off "end-game only", demote leveling to a "means to an end", rather than an end in itself and get players interested in the entire game from level 1 again, we'll see a change. But, as was said.. players have been "programmed" to approach MMOs in a specific way, and it's not going to be easy to change that.

Let me start by saying great article and so far a pretty good read through the replies. 

Even though it's been a good read, the thread should've ended with Sylvene's post about "measurables".  Measurables are essentially the heart of any rpg and is what separates it from your basic adventure game or fps.  Pretty much all games today have some kind of story attatched to them.  What makes an rpg an rpg is character progression through some kind of measurable.  We can remove levels altogether, but they'll only be replaced by some new concept as a way to gauge progress.  If they're not replaced, then your rpg just became an fps or platformer or action-adventure.

Of course all of this is my own opinion but this is what I think has happened to mmorpgs to bring them to the state they're in.

1.  Lack of Challenge.   There's alot ot be said for the concept of risk vs reward.  Not only does something that challenges you get your blood flowing, but if the reward is there, that true feeling of accomplishment is all the driving force needed in an rpg.  In my opinion, mmorpgs have become too trivial.  Of course, level grinding is boring, there's absolutely no challenge to it.  You walk out the gate, see a creature that is within an appropriate level range and its icon indicates that it is solable so you attack it and kill it with ease.  Where's the fun in that?  One of the worst things that happened to me in gaming was going from a game that only gave general indication of a mobs difficulty to one that flat out told me I could beat X mob everytime.

2.  Community.  So let's not beat around the bush.  We pay monthly fees for the ability to play online with other players and feel like we're part of something wonderful, unique, and larger than what we experience in everyday "real" life. (Well, I'm sure most of us do, anyway.  There are the few that pay just for the chance to annoy the others.)  So when in the heck did it become the norm to solo the majority of content?  More importantly, WHY?  Well, it's probably because our goals shifted from having fun in the virtual word we're sharing with these other people to racing to the "measurable" cap that is supposed to somehow make us feel superior to those who haven't got there yet.  People don't want to "waste time" exploring, traveling, or just enjoying the scenery.  They want instant access to EXP and the more the better.  Again bringing around the assumption that levels are merely obstacles.

Well, what have we gained from that phase shift?  A really frustrated and pissed off community that is less friendly and rarely in the mood to socialize.  General chats filled with mindless arguments and regurgitated memes.  Endless quest grinding where people would just as soon be inconsiderate to those around them than waste precious seconds that could be used for grinding other quests.

Again, in my opinion, I think what we've seen recently is the blur of once distinct lines of gaming genres.  Every mmo is now expected to appeal to the role players, the PVPers, the twitch gamers, the min-maxers, the tradeskillers, the platformers, the FPSers, etc.   But in all the new tricks and latest advances, the mmorpg lost its true essence.  The MMO part and the RPG part.

Note: I'm at the office and was interrupted and kinda lost my train of thought there. But all in all, I think my opinion was expressed.

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Originally posted by Ozmodan

The author talks about the mistakes made by the Warhammer developers and yet can't figure out that he is taking a portion of the MMO industry and attempting to pawn it off  as representative of the entire Industry.

Dana, you need to get out more.  Your complaint is directed at the EQ / Wow clones, which, while making up a good portion of the industry do not represent the entirety of it.

There are very successful games that avoid your problem entirely.  The first one that comes to mind is Eve.  UO is another that did not have your problem.  There are others more recent in this category and some that will be releasing in the next year or so.

As to Star Wars, the Old Republic, they are also stuck in the character class and level rut.  Whether they can overcome this huge handicap we will just have to wait and see.

 

I didn't get that Dana was saying there weren't any (of course I may be wrong) but instead that it seems the larger developer houses who are most capable of making a game at a fairly high quality (I know, but don't try to laugh too hard at that) seem to have horse blinders on and continue to stay in that rut. They then throw around words like "next gen" and innovative when they only are changing from red paint to blue.

"Next gen" or "innovative" would be, in my opinion and I doubt I'm the only one, developing a new basic mechanics systems or trying an update of systems like those in UO or AC. Most games out of these houses now have the EQ basic system and only vary up the "sprinkles" on that vanilla ice cream.

Yeah, basically right. The vast majority do what I described, but yes there are examples of cases where games tried a different approach.

However, for me, there is no right answer. If every MMO designer said "crap, Dana's right, let's start over" simultaneously, we'd have a sea of problems too. We need WoW-like games, we need UO-like games and we need games no one has even thought of yet.

By and large, everyone is on the WoW train these days. I played a lot of UO, but continuing to cite a decade old example is a bit much. Games that don't fit the class/level mold are coming out once every 3-4 years.

Think of it this way. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the EQ/WoW style of game. It's a great kind of game that a lot of people enjoy. However, to me, I look at it like "periods" in art. Usually people remember the first (EQ) that kicked off a new period in painting or sculpting... and the "last," who is rarely the actual last, but the last one to make a huge mark in that style. In this case, WoW. Now that we have our bookends and someone has pioneered a style of MMO and someone else has perfected it... it's time for someone to branch out and invent a new style if they want to be mega successful.

Great analogy.  Spot on.

Originally posted by Dana

 

Yeah, basically right. The vast majority do what I described, but yes there are examples of cases where games tried a different approach.

However, for me, there is no right answer. If every MMO designer said "crap, Dana's right, let's start over" simultaneously, we'd have a sea of problems too. We need WoW-like games, we need UO-like games and we need games no one has even thought of yet.

By and large, everyone is on the WoW train these days. I played a lot of UO, but continuing to cite a decade old example is a bit much. Games that don't fit the class/level mold are coming out once every 3-4 years.

Think of it this way. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the EQ/WoW style of game. It's a great kind of game that a lot of people enjoy. However, to me, I look at it like "periods" in art. Usually people remember the first (EQ) that kicked off a new period in painting or sculpting... and the "last," who is rarely the actual last, but the last one to make a huge mark in that style. In this case, WoW. Now that we have our bookends and someone has pioneered a style of MMO and someone else has perfected it... it's time for someone to branch out and invent a new style if they want to be mega successful.

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Originally posted by Ozmodan

The author talks about the mistakes made by the Warhammer developers and yet can't figure out that he is taking a portion of the MMO industry and attempting to pawn it off  as representative of the entire Industry.

Dana, you need to get out more.  Your complaint is directed at the EQ / Wow clones, which, while making up a good portion of the industry do not represent the entirety of it.

There are very successful games that avoid your problem entirely.  The first one that comes to mind is Eve.  UO is another that did not have your problem.  There are others more recent in this category and some that will be releasing in the next year or so.

As to Star Wars, the Old Republic, they are also stuck in the character class and level rut.  Whether they can overcome this huge handicap we will just have to wait and see.

 

I didn't get that Dana was saying there weren't any (of course I may be wrong) but instead that it seems the larger developer houses who are most capable of making a game at a fairly high quality (I know, but don't try to laugh too hard at that) seem to have horse blinders on and continue to stay in that rut. They then throw around words like "next gen" and innovative when they only are changing from red paint to blue.

"Next gen" or "innovative" would be, in my opinion and I doubt I'm the only one, developing a new basic mechanics systems or trying an update of systems like those in UO or AC. Most games out of these houses now have the EQ basic system and only vary up the "sprinkles" on that vanilla ice cream.

 

Yeah, basically right. The vast majority do what I described, but yes there are examples of cases where games tried a different approach.

However, for me, there is no right answer. If every MMO designer said "crap, Dana's right, let's start over" simultaneously, we'd have a sea of problems too. We need WoW-like games, we need UO-like games and we need games no one has even thought of yet.

By and large, everyone is on the WoW train these days. I played a lot of UO, but continuing to cite a decade old example is a bit much. Games that don't fit the class/level mold are coming out once every 3-4 years.

Think of it this way. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the EQ/WoW style of game. It's a great kind of game that a lot of people enjoy. However, to me, I look at it like "periods" in art. Usually people remember the first (EQ) that kicked off a new period in painting or sculpting... and the "last," who is rarely the actual last, but the last one to make a huge mark in that style. In this case, WoW. Now that we have our bookends and someone has pioneered a style of MMO and someone else has perfected it... it's time for someone to branch out and invent a new style if they want to be mega successful.

Dana, I have to disagree with you once more.  Let's be clear here, WoW didn't perfect anything aside from how to market it's game.  To use your analogy regarding periods in art.  In WoW's case, it's not the painting or the style, but rather the marketing of that painting or style that is the measure for WoW's success.  Just because everyone was told to go see painting A at exhibit X while painting B sits in a little known gallery somewhere else, doesn't mean that painting A has perfected the style.

If you polled the majority of people, or glimpsed user ratings for the majority of gaming sites, INCLUDING THIS ONE, you'll notice a trend; Wow isn't listed within the top tier of games, even in it's own genre.  Most people who I've run into refer to some other game that they've played as being a much more enjoyable experience. In addition, I've met numerous people who would rather be playing something else, but are on the "WoW train" because all of their friends are.  Furthermore the majority of those "friends" they are playing WoW with haven't even tried other MMO's and therefore don't have a clue as to what they may or may not be missing in another game.

Finally, while the marketing for WoW has greatly expanded thus increasing the number of players to what we see now, most of the original WoW players or die hard MMOers would likely agree that WoW, as a "picture" or "style", has taken a significant turn for the worse. If you took the brains behind WoW's marketing genius out of the equation would we even be having this discussion?

Just because McDonald's sells more hamburgers than any other, it by no means, is any indication that they have perfected the style.  I'd still much rather have a burger from my local steakhouse.

Originally posted by MrcdesOwnr

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Originally posted by Ozmodan

The author talks about the mistakes made by the Warhammer developers and yet can't figure out that he is taking a portion of the MMO industry and attempting to pawn it off  as representative of the entire Industry.

Dana, you need to get out more.  Your complaint is directed at the EQ / Wow clones, which, while making up a good portion of the industry do not represent the entirety of it.

There are very successful games that avoid your problem entirely.  The first one that comes to mind is Eve.  UO is another that did not have your problem.  There are others more recent in this category and some that will be releasing in the next year or so.

As to Star Wars, the Old Republic, they are also stuck in the character class and level rut.  Whether they can overcome this huge handicap we will just have to wait and see.

 

I didn't get that Dana was saying there weren't any (of course I may be wrong) but instead that it seems the larger developer houses who are most capable of making a game at a fairly high quality (I know, but don't try to laugh too hard at that) seem to have horse blinders on and continue to stay in that rut. They then throw around words like "next gen" and innovative when they only are changing from red paint to blue.

"Next gen" or "innovative" would be, in my opinion and I doubt I'm the only one, developing a new basic mechanics systems or trying an update of systems like those in UO or AC. Most games out of these houses now have the EQ basic system and only vary up the "sprinkles" on that vanilla ice cream.

 

Yeah, basically right. The vast majority do what I described, but yes there are examples of cases where games tried a different approach.

However, for me, there is no right answer. If every MMO designer said "crap, Dana's right, let's start over" simultaneously, we'd have a sea of problems too. We need WoW-like games, we need UO-like games and we need games no one has even thought of yet.

By and large, everyone is on the WoW train these days. I played a lot of UO, but continuing to cite a decade old example is a bit much. Games that don't fit the class/level mold are coming out once every 3-4 years.

Think of it this way. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the EQ/WoW style of game. It's a great kind of game that a lot of people enjoy. However, to me, I look at it like "periods" in art. Usually people remember the first (EQ) that kicked off a new period in painting or sculpting... and the "last," who is rarely the actual last, but the last one to make a huge mark in that style. In this case, WoW. Now that we have our bookends and someone has pioneered a style of MMO and someone else has perfected it... it's time for someone to branch out and invent a new style if they want to be mega successful.

 

Dana, I have to disagree with you once more.  Let's be clear here, WoW didn't perfect anything aside from how to market it's game.  To use your analogy regarding periods in art.  In WoW's case, it's not the painting or the style, but rather the marketing of that painting or style that is the measure for WoW's success.  Just because everyone was told to go see painting A at exhibit X while painting B sits in a little known gallery somewhere else, doesn't mean that painting A has perfected the style.

If you polled the majority of people, or glimpsed user ratings for the majority of gaming sites, INCLUDING THIS ONE, you'll notice a trend; Wow isn't listed within the top tier of games, even in it's own genre.  Most people who I've run into refer to some other game that they've played as being a much more enjoyable experience. In addition, I've met numerous people who would rather be playing something else, but are on the "WoW train" because all of their friends are.  Furthermore the majority of those "friends" they are playing WoW with haven't even tried other MMO's and therefore don't have a clue as to what they may or may not be missing in another game.

Finally, while the marketing for WoW has greatly expanded thus increasing the number of players to what we see now, most of the original WoW players or die hard MMOers would likely agree that WoW, as a "picture" or "style", has taken a significant turn for the worse. If you took the brains behind WoW's marketing genius out of the equation would we even be having this discussion?

Just because McDonald's sells more hamburgers than any other, it by no means, is any indication that they have perfected the style.  I'd still much rather have a burger from my local steakhouse.

Marketing will not sell bad SUB based game... sorry m8.

WoW has proofed that "quality" in the right departments pays off.  It just happens that those departments also support millions of ppl playing the game on low spec PCs. 

Let me make pretty clear example here.  You can go into a tower or an Inn in WOW and they all have the exsact same basic look.  Still - It somehow didn't bother me.  Cause what I was doing in there mattered more than what I was looking at. 

Now... I have played quite a few MMOs (WAR - AOC just for example) that have much more variety in graphics and looks when it comes to these kinda places.  But ... somehow I end up logging out of those games bored to death doing the same thing over and over and over again - even when the places LOOK diffrent.   Not to mention that the look is causing alot of loading screens that has nothing to do with why Im going to these places...  Cause - doing quests has nothing to do with loading screens... Dont take me wrong tho - I love RPG games that have alot of "diffrent" looking places - like NWN for example.  It actually adds alot do these kinda games while it adds ONLY loading screens to the MMOs (for me that is.

I find WAR to be pretty much the exact problem with MMOs atm.  It all sounds good - even looks ok.  But underneath are so many basic flaws that push ppl away from the game.  It sinks in over time and since WAR is not really fixing the real issues - very few ppl will give the game a second chance. 

I want to end on a simple question that might open some eyes.  Why does a PVP content need to reward ppl with other than winning ?  Why do ppl need more - Like items or lvls for example ?   If you want to show your quality in PVP then you should beat ppl on your skills - not on the gear you wear. ....

 This is the best article I have read here in a month.  Literally hits the nail on the head perfectly.  

Khaunshar "Guild Wars actually does its PvE Progression primarily through storyline in the Expansions Factions and Nightfall."

Thank you, I was wondering if someone was going to mention Guild Wars. I thought of GW when I read the article and some of the descriptions that would make a mmo better.

steuss "it will be hard to make games where 'levels' are not the focus"

I don't think it would be that hard actually. Just make a lower lvl cap as Guild Wars did and make the focus on the actual content in the game such as the "instances" that can be played with a one person party that has henchmen or a group of multiple players. GW also focuses on skills more than levels. You earn skills or buy them depending on your preference/progress in the game. I'm sure some developers out there can think of some way to take the boredom out of constantly hacking on some thing and make a game enjoyable. I use GW as example because it is the only MMO that I can think of, that I play, that doesn't focus on level but instead skills, player or activated skill. Oh and I didn't like the level capping at 20 at first and gripped about having to only choose 8 skills or so out of the many I earned. I got use to it though. I actually enjoy unlocking the different areas through out the game.

As for War, I played beta...hated it, played after it was released...hated it but I've taken an interest in it again since it is different than the grind fest free to play games I'm use to. That must be why I fluctuate between at least 4 different game atm. I get bored of one type of play style and play a different one then come back later when I tire of that one.

Originally posted by Frobner

Originally posted by MrcdesOwnr

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Originally posted by Ozmodan

The author talks about the mistakes made by the Warhammer developers and yet can't figure out that he is taking a portion of the MMO industry and attempting to pawn it off  as representative of the entire Industry.

Dana, you need to get out more.  Your complaint is directed at the EQ / Wow clones, which, while making up a good portion of the industry do not represent the entirety of it.

There are very successful games that avoid your problem entirely.  The first one that comes to mind is Eve.  UO is another that did not have your problem.  There are others more recent in this category and some that will be releasing in the next year or so.

As to Star Wars, the Old Republic, they are also stuck in the character class and level rut.  Whether they can overcome this huge handicap we will just have to wait and see.

 

I didn't get that Dana was saying there weren't any (of course I may be wrong) but instead that it seems the larger developer houses who are most capable of making a game at a fairly high quality (I know, but don't try to laugh too hard at that) seem to have horse blinders on and continue to stay in that rut. They then throw around words like "next gen" and innovative when they only are changing from red paint to blue.

"Next gen" or "innovative" would be, in my opinion and I doubt I'm the only one, developing a new basic mechanics systems or trying an update of systems like those in UO or AC. Most games out of these houses now have the EQ basic system and only vary up the "sprinkles" on that vanilla ice cream.

 

Yeah, basically right. The vast majority do what I described, but yes there are examples of cases where games tried a different approach.

However, for me, there is no right answer. If every MMO designer said "crap, Dana's right, let's start over" simultaneously, we'd have a sea of problems too. We need WoW-like games, we need UO-like games and we need games no one has even thought of yet.

By and large, everyone is on the WoW train these days. I played a lot of UO, but continuing to cite a decade old example is a bit much. Games that don't fit the class/level mold are coming out once every 3-4 years.

Think of it this way. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the EQ/WoW style of game. It's a great kind of game that a lot of people enjoy. However, to me, I look at it like "periods" in art. Usually people remember the first (EQ) that kicked off a new period in painting or sculpting... and the "last," who is rarely the actual last, but the last one to make a huge mark in that style. In this case, WoW. Now that we have our bookends and someone has pioneered a style of MMO and someone else has perfected it... it's time for someone to branch out and invent a new style if they want to be mega successful.

 

Dana, I have to disagree with you once more.  Let's be clear here, WoW didn't perfect anything aside from how to market it's game.  To use your analogy regarding periods in art.  In WoW's case, it's not the painting or the style, but rather the marketing of that painting or style that is the measure for WoW's success.  Just because everyone was told to go see painting A at exhibit X while painting B sits in a little known gallery somewhere else, doesn't mean that painting A has perfected the style.

If you polled the majority of people, or glimpsed user ratings for the majority of gaming sites, INCLUDING THIS ONE, you'll notice a trend; Wow isn't listed within the top tier of games, even in it's own genre.  Most people who I've run into refer to some other game that they've played as being a much more enjoyable experience. In addition, I've met numerous people who would rather be playing something else, but are on the "WoW train" because all of their friends are.  Furthermore the majority of those "friends" they are playing WoW with haven't even tried other MMO's and therefore don't have a clue as to what they may or may not be missing in another game.

Finally, while the marketing for WoW has greatly expanded thus increasing the number of players to what we see now, most of the original WoW players or die hard MMOers would likely agree that WoW, as a "picture" or "style", has taken a significant turn for the worse. If you took the brains behind WoW's marketing genius out of the equation would we even be having this discussion?

Just because McDonald's sells more hamburgers than any other, it by no means, is any indication that they have perfected the style.  I'd still much rather have a burger from my local steakhouse.

 

Marketing will not sell bad SUB based game... sorry m8.

WoW has proofed that "quality" in the right departments pays off.  It just happens that those departments also support millions of ppl playing the game on low spec PCs. 

Let me make pretty clear example here.  You can go into a tower or an Inn in WOW and they all have the exsact same basic look.  Still - It somehow didn't bother me.  Cause what I was doing in there mattered more than what I was looking at. 

Now... I have played quite a few MMOs (WAR - AOC just for example) that have much more variety in graphics and looks when it comes to these kinda places.  But ... somehow I end up logging out of those games bored to death doing the same thing over and over and over again - even when the places LOOK diffrent.   Not to mention that the look is causing alot of loading screens that has nothing to do with why Im going to these places...  Cause - doing quests has nothing to do with loading screens... Dont take me wrong tho - I love RPG games that have alot of "diffrent" looking places - like NWN for example.  It actually adds alot do these kinda games while it adds ONLY loading screens to the MMOs (for me that is.

I find WAR to be pretty much the exact problem with MMOs atm.  It all sounds good - even looks ok.  But underneath are so many basic flaws that push ppl away from the game.  It sinks in over time and since WAR is not really fixing the real issues - very few ppl will give the game a second chance. 

I want to end on a simple question that might open some eyes.  Why does a PVP content need to reward ppl with other than winning ?  Why do ppl need more - Like items or lvls for example ?   If you want to show your quality in PVP then you should beat ppl on your skills - not on the gear you wear. ....

Umm, where in my reply did I ever say WoW was a "bad SUB based game", M8?  I was merely making a point regarding Dana's comment in the previous post that WoW, "perfected the style".

You WoWheads are all alike, so quick to defend your game, that you often don't even have a clue as to the point someone else is trying to make.  Unbelievable, no wonder it is so often referred to as World of Warcrack.

Oh, and last but not least, I will quote the following from you:

"WoW has proofed that "quality" in the right departments pays off. It just happens that those departments also support millions of ppl playing the game on low spec PCs."

Hate to open your eyes Bub, but that thing there, that you described above...Umm, THAT'S MARKETING!  Designing the game so that it can play on just about any PC, when there are already games that clearly set the graphics bar higher is a marketing decision.  Clearly implemented so that the company's product will appeal to more people and therefore sell to a wider audience...MARKETING!

Thanks for helping me prove my point though.

I enjoyed reading this article and some of the responses as well.

I love the MMO genre and prefer it over the RPG single-player experience.

I started playing MMOs in 2002, starting with EQ, so I'm not an expert

Seeing a game that embraces the actual medium of the MMO is what I'm waiting for.

In no particular order:

1) MMOs imho need to move away from the D&D/Fantasy aspects of game play and mechanics. Look towards the future - space travel, different solar systems, life forms. Embrace the virtual world for what it is - a virtual space where the environment is written in code. "Magic" can still be a part of this in some areas of this MMO universe.

2) The obvious fact that there are players interacting and interconnected via the computer world needs to be exploited in the story-line plot. What I'm trying to get at is something like the "Otherworld" book series or even "The Matrix".

3) Static roles that characters play need to be done away with (tank, healer, etc.) As a computer world, we should be able to form and shape our characters to what our particular group needs at the moment. (EVE does something like this in that you can train any skill that you have purchased.)

4) Travel should not be a commodity held tightly by the developers. This is a computer world - use your imagination! Let travel be ingenious, less cumbersome, less of a chore.

5) Artificial hurdles placed there because of dogma, tradition, or lack of imagination, should be torn down and reshaped from the ground up. This is a very general statement purposefully. I would like every aspect of the MMO to be looked at and challenged.

6) Crafting of items should not be an afterthought to the game. Crafting should be a puzzle but not puzzling. It should be rewarding and difficult, but not tedious.

7) The economy of the game needs to be consistent and harsh. If players aren't playing and crafting, item availability should reflect that. 

These are just some of my thoughts, hastily put together, but brewing in my mind. If I won the Powerball, making an MMO would be one of the things I would undertake.

There is so much potential within the MMO but because of business, we are being dealt the same old same old. I'm not sure that using a known vehicle for the MMO (Star Wars, The Matrix, Song of Fire and Ice) is the best way to go - people will already have preconceived notions about what the world is like and so deviation would not be tolerated. In that sense, EVE is an undertaking that deserves recognition.

I hope I get to see an MMO break through the boundaries and really push the limit of our expectations....

Originally posted by armenvosk

I enjoyed reading this article and some of the responses as well.

I love the MMO genre and prefer it over the RPG single-player experience.

I started playing MMOs in 2002, starting with EQ, so I'm not an expert

Seeing a game that embraces the actual medium of the MMO is what I'm waiting for.

In no particular order:

1) MMOs imho need to move away from the D&D/Fantasy aspects of game play and mechanics. Look towards the future - space travel, different solar systems, life forms. Embrace the virtual world for what it is - a virtual space where the environment is written in code. "Magic" can still be a part of this in some areas of this MMO universe.

2) The obvious fact that there are players interacting and interconnected via the computer world needs to be exploited in the story-line plot. What I'm trying to get at is something like the "Otherworld" book series or even "The Matrix".

3) Static roles that characters play need to be done away with (tank, healer, etc.) As a computer world, we should be able to form and shape our characters to what our particular group needs at the moment. (EVE does something like this in that you can train any skill that you have purchased.)

4) Travel should not be a commodity held tightly by the developers. This is a computer world - use your imagination! Let travel be ingenious.

5) Artificial hurdles placed there because of dogma, tradition, or lack of imagination, should be torn down and reshaped from the ground up. This is a very general statement purposefully. I would like every aspect of the MMO to be looked at and challenged.

6) Crafting of items should not be an afterthought to the game.

7) The economy of the game needs to be consistent and harsh. If players aren't playing and crafting, item availability should reflect that.

 

These are just some of my thoughts, hastily put together, but brewing in my mind. If I won the Powerball, making an MMO would be one of the things I would undertake.

There is so much potential within the MMO but because of business, we are being dealt the same old same old. I'm not sure that using a known vehicle for the MMO (Star Wars, The Matrix, Song of Fire and Ice) is the best way to go - people will already have preconceived notions about what the world is like and so deviation would not be tolerated. In that sense, EVE is an undertaking that deserves recognition.

I hope I get to see an MMO break through the boundaries and really push the limit of our expectations....

 

Very well said.  I couldn't agree more with the first point that you made regarding moving away from D&D/Fantasy genre.  I'm looking forward to Star Trek Online, the next good super hero MMO, and (although it's Sciene Fiction/Fantasy) Swtor, for that very reason.

I also think you have a very valid point with the third item on your list.  I've often wondered why more games haven't taken this approach, but instead continue to be so cookie-cutter.

Originally posted by MrcdesOwnr

 

Umm, where in my reply did I ever say WoW was a "bad SUB based game", M8?  I was merely making a point regarding Dana's comment in the previous post that WoW, "perfected the style".

You WoWheads are all alike, so quick to defend your game, that you often don't even have a clue as to the point someone else is trying to make.  Unbelievable, no wonder it is so often referred to as World of Warcrack.

Oh, and last but not least, I will quote the following from you:

"WoW has proofed that "quality" in the right departments pays off. It just happens that those departments also support millions of ppl playing the game on low spec PCs."

Hate to open your eyes Bub, but that thing there, that you described above...Umm, THAT'S MARKETING!  Designing the game so that it can play on just about any PC, when there are already games that clearly set the graphics bar higher is a marketing decision.  Clearly implemented so that the company's product will appeal to more people and therefore sell to a wider audience...MARKETING!

Thanks for helping me prove my point though.

Maketing disission or gameplay disission?  Do ppl like to play fast pased open world, few loading screen games ?  It seems so...  Thats game design tho - one that makes WOW stand out from games like EQ.   

And if WOW is nothing but marketing... then how bad are the other MMOs?   Im sorry but releasing a good solid game with clear vision focused on gameplay and coop (like orginally in WOW) is hopefully what every MMO developer is aiming for.  To me it has nothing to do with marketing tho... it has to do with respecting the custimors that buy the product.  And this is exactly where games like WAR and AOC have totally failed on release. 

BTW - Im not a WOW fan and don't play it anymore.  But I respect 100% what Blizzard have been doing for the last 4 years.  I dont like everything that they have done and I hated some parts of it.  So take your "your a fan" bullshit somewhere else.   Overall the core game design of WOW is by far the best any MMO game has ever offered.  And they have been able to add a layer of polish upon that - unlike what many other MMOs have been able to do.  Call that Marketing.. or call that showing a tiny bit of respect for the custimors that buy your product... 

Originally posted by Frobner

Originally posted by MrcdesOwnr

 

Umm, where in my reply did I ever say WoW was a "bad SUB based game", M8?  I was merely making a point regarding Dana's comment in the previous post that WoW, "perfected the style".

You WoWheads are all alike, so quick to defend your game, that you often don't even have a clue as to the point someone else is trying to make.  Unbelievable, no wonder it is so often referred to as World of Warcrack.

Oh, and last but not least, I will quote the following from you:

"WoW has proofed that "quality" in the right departments pays off. It just happens that those departments also support millions of ppl playing the game on low spec PCs."

Hate to open your eyes Bub, but that thing there, that you described above...Umm, THAT'S MARKETING!  Designing the game so that it can play on just about any PC, when there are already games that clearly set the graphics bar higher is a marketing decision.  Clearly implemented so that the company's product will appeal to more people and therefore sell to a wider audience...MARKETING!

Thanks for helping me prove my point though.

Maketing disission or gameplay disission?  Do ppl like to play fast pased open world, few loading screen games ?  It seems so...  Thats game design tho - one that makes WOW stand out from games like EQ.   

And if WOW is nothing but marketing... then how bad are the other MMOs?   Im sorry but releasing a good solid game with clear vision focused on gameplay and coop (like orginally in WOW) is hopefully what every MMO developer is aiming for.  To me it has nothing to do with marketing tho... it has to do with respecting the custimors that buy the product.  And this is exactly where games like WAR and AOC have totally failed on release. 

BTW - Im not a WOW fan and don't play it anymore.  But I respect 100% what Blizzard have been doing for the last 4 years.  I dont like everything that they have done and I hated some parts of it.  So take your "your a fan" bullshit somewhere else.   Overall the core game design of WOW is by far the best any MMO game has ever offered.  And they have been able to add a layer of polish upon that - unlike what many other MMOs have been able to do.  Call that Marketing.. or call that showing a tiny bit of respect for the custimors that buy your product... 

You people obviously have no clue about building a successful business.  I hate to open your eyes to the harsh reality of business, but it's all about the almighty dollar or the bottom line.  Blizzard doesn't give a squat about you, just your money. Neither does any other successful big-name company out there and anyone out there that thinks a company is going to put you before making money, is a fool.

You are correct in saying that it is a gameplay decision.  It is!  Which is part of a greater marketing decision! You don't think that is factored in to the companies decision on how to make more money?  All these concepts are financially backed by investors looking to profit and that's the first thing that they look at when deciding whether or not to financially back an idea.   Wake up, it's a business and guess what, they're not in business to lose money.   Businesses are out to make as much money as they can, so don't kid yourself.  Why do you think Blizzard has come up with all these ways to get you to spend more of your hard earned money (which is more marketing genius)?  Oh, that's right, it's because they really respect those that are buying their product. Bahahaha!

You people obviously have no clue about building a successful business.  I hate to open your eyes to the harsh reality of business, but it's all about the almighty dollar or the bottom line.  Blizzard doesn't give a squat about you, just your money. Neither does any other successful big-name company out there and anyone out there that thinks a company is going to put you before making money, is a fool.

You are correct in saying that it is a gameplay decision.  It is!  Which is part of a greater marketing decision! You don't think that is factored in to the companies decision on how to make more money?  Wake up, it's a business and guess what, businesses are out to make as much money as they can, so don't kid yourself.  Why do you think Blizzard has come up with all these ways to get you to spend more of your hard earned money (which is more marketing genius)?  Oh, that's right, it's because they really respect those that are buying their product.  Bahahaha!

This is the type of mentality - as true as it might seem - that clouds and discourages the minds of players. I'm not picking on MrcdesOwner per se.

Blizzard may not be the place where the truly groundbreaking MMO arises from; on the other hand, its financial success may allow it to buck the system and create something that they can afford not to be a mega-hit.

If an MMO were to come out like the one I describe, I doubt it would do anywhere near as well as WoW. Instead, I imagine it would slowly eek out an existance for itself, perhaps like EvE.

As much as a business as MMOs are, the creaters, the imaginations behind it, do not come from the business suits. The business suits cannot create anything; for one thing they are always sitting in the driver's seat looking backwards: "What has worked before?" "WoW." "Make it like WoW." 

It is going to take creative minds that are not mired in the past (i.e. tradition) with a strong financial backing in order to create something that will truly take us on a virtual journey.

I can't wait....

Originally posted by armenvosk

You people obviously have no clue about building a successful business.  I hate to open your eyes to the harsh reality of business, but it's all about the almighty dollar or the bottom line.  Blizzard doesn't give a squat about you, just your money. Neither does any other successful big-name company out there and anyone out there that thinks a company is going to put you before making money, is a fool.

You are correct in saying that it is a gameplay decision.  It is!  Which is part of a greater marketing decision! You don't think that is factored in to the companies decision on how to make more money?  Wake up, it's a business and guess what, businesses are out to make as much money as they can, so don't kid yourself.  Why do you think Blizzard has come up with all these ways to get you to spend more of your hard earned money (which is more marketing genius)?  Oh, that's right, it's because they really respect those that are buying their product.  Bahahaha!

 

This is the type of mentality - as true as it might seem - that clouds and discourages the minds of players. I'm not picking on MrcdesOwner per se.

Blizzard may not be the place where the truly groundbreaking MMO arises from; on the other hand, its financial success may allow it to buck the system and create something that they can afford not to be a mega-hit.

If an MMO were to come out like the one I describe, I doubt it would do anywhere near as well as WoW. Instead, I imagine it would slowly eek out an existance for itself, perhaps like EvE.

As much as a business as MMOs are, the creaters, the imaginations behind it, do not come from the business suits. The business suits cannot create anything; for one thing they are always sitting in the driver's seat looking backwards: "What has worked before?" "WoW." "Make it like WoW." 

It is going to take creative minds that are not mired in the past (i.e. tradition) with a strong financial backing in order to create something that will truly take us on a virtual journey.

I can't wait....

I'm not trying to cloud and discourage the minds of players, quite the contrary and I'm sorry if I've come across as a jerk, but I'm trying to clear your minds to the reality of the world we live in.

It's a dollars and cents thing.  Take McDonald's for example, most people would agree that their burgers are nowhere near the best tasting burger (I believe there has even been polls showing this).  Yet, McDonald's sells more burgers every year (by a huge margin), than anyone else. Now, why is it that their burgers grossly outsells better tasting burgers? The reason for this is due to marketing.  Don't agree with me, fine, ask any successful business owner or marketing rep. Nike is another example, they had the vision to be the first to market using famous athletes, namely Michael Jordan.  Their success is not derived because they sell the best shoe, but because they were the best at marketing their shoe. I can guarantee that their are other products out there that are easily better than the leading selling product in it's respective class or category. Products that are absolutely amazing, only you've never heard of them! As McDonald's has proven, mediocre products can become huge successes with great marketing, but great products will never become huge successes with mediocre marketing.

Now I never said WoW was a bad game people, I've had two WoW accounts running since shortly after the game first launched. But, my whole point is that WoW's success is derived from a company that knows how to sell. You think it's by accident that Blizzard artificially enhances the number of subs? It is a marketing strategy to increase subs. They want you to feel like, 'gee 5 million subscribers can't be wrong, I wonder what I'm missing'. Blizzard was also the first to really push their product on websites and in TV ads.  How many ads for an online game had you seen on TV and other websites before WoW?  Zero! I'm sure that in creating WoW, the developers ran into numerous forks in the road; do we take road A or road B. I'm sure that if it came down to one road leading to what they wanted to do from a developers standpoint and the other being better from a marketing standpoint, they took the latter. That's the brilliance behind a company like Blizzard as opposed to say Mythic or Funcom.

I bet if you polled the execs at Blizzard as to the driving force behind their success, they would attribute it to knowing how to sell their product, not the product itself.  Just like McDonald's, just like Nike.

Originally posted by MrcdesOwnr

Originally posted by Dana

Yeah, basically right. The vast majority do what I described, but yes there are examples of cases where games tried a different approach.

However, for me, there is no right answer. If every MMO designer said "crap, Dana's right, let's start over" simultaneously, we'd have a sea of problems too. We need WoW-like games, we need UO-like games and we need games no one has even thought of yet.

By and large, everyone is on the WoW train these days. I played a lot of UO, but continuing to cite a decade old example is a bit much. Games that don't fit the class/level mold are coming out once every 3-4 years.

Think of it this way. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the EQ/WoW style of game. It's a great kind of game that a lot of people enjoy. However, to me, I look at it like "periods" in art. Usually people remember the first (EQ) that kicked off a new period in painting or sculpting... and the "last," who is rarely the actual last, but the last one to make a huge mark in that style. In this case, WoW. Now that we have our bookends and someone has pioneered a style of MMO and someone else has perfected it... it's time for someone to branch out and invent a new style if they want to be mega successful.

 

Dana, I have to disagree with you once more.  Let's be clear here, WoW didn't perfect anything aside from how to market it's game.  To use your analogy regarding periods in art.  In WoW's case, it's not the painting or the style, but rather the marketing of that painting or style that is the measure for WoW's success.  Just because everyone was told to go see painting A at exhibit X while painting B sits in a little known gallery somewhere else, doesn't mean that painting A has perfected the style.

If you polled the majority of people, or glimpsed user ratings for the majority of gaming sites, INCLUDING THIS ONE, you'll notice a trend; Wow isn't listed within the top tier of games, even in it's own genre.  Most people who I've run into refer to some other game that they've played as being a much more enjoyable experience. In addition, I've met numerous people who would rather be playing something else, but are on the "WoW train" because all of their friends are.  Furthermore the majority of those "friends" they are playing WoW with haven't even tried other MMO's and therefore don't have a clue as to what they may or may not be missing in another game.

Finally, while the marketing for WoW has greatly expanded thus increasing the number of players to what we see now, most of the original WoW players or die hard MMOers would likely agree that WoW, as a "picture" or "style", has taken a significant turn for the worse. If you took the brains behind WoW's marketing genius out of the equation would we even be having this discussion?

Just because McDonald's sells more hamburgers than any other, it by no means, is any indication that they have perfected the style.  I'd still much rather have a burger from my local steakhouse.

No worries, I wouldn't write the articles if I thought everyone would agree with me. That would be awfully boring!

A few notes though. Ask a serious art historian and they usually won't name that "perfector" as their favorite. What that person did, the guy who "perfected the style" is market his stuff, get in front of the most people or convince the Pope to pay for the most of it.

So, regardless of what you think of WoW and its quality, it is the definitive MMO of this generation and there is no way around it. It is and given the lead it has on every other game ever made in this genre, it will be remembered as such.

Your note about popularity is a peculiarity I've noticed as well, but honestly, I think the explanation is easier than you might imagine. MMO fans play or are aware of WoW. WoW fans do not necessarily even know there are other MMOs.

Honestly, based solely on subscriptions, WoW should be far and away the biggest traffic generator on this site. It isn't. By contrast, some sites you'd glance at and call a "WoW fansite" get more traffic than this site does, and we're not exactly small.

They're two separate communities that no one has fully integrated into each other yet. I've spoken to more people than I can remember who ask what I do and when I say I work for "MMORPG.com" they cannot even get the acronym right. If I say "it's a kind of game, like WoW," they know exactly what I mean.

So, arguments of quality totally set aside... WoW is the definitive game in this genre. Arguing otherwise is a bit nieve.

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by MrcdesOwnr

Originally posted by Dana

Yeah, basically right. The vast majority do what I described, but yes there are examples of cases where games tried a different approach.

However, for me, there is no right answer. If every MMO designer said "crap, Dana's right, let's start over" simultaneously, we'd have a sea of problems too. We need WoW-like games, we need UO-like games and we need games no one has even thought of yet.

By and large, everyone is on the WoW train these days. I played a lot of UO, but continuing to cite a decade old example is a bit much. Games that don't fit the class/level mold are coming out once every 3-4 years.

Think of it this way. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the EQ/WoW style of game. It's a great kind of game that a lot of people enjoy. However, to me, I look at it like "periods" in art. Usually people remember the first (EQ) that kicked off a new period in painting or sculpting... and the "last," who is rarely the actual last, but the last one to make a huge mark in that style. In this case, WoW. Now that we have our bookends and someone has pioneered a style of MMO and someone else has perfected it... it's time for someone to branch out and invent a new style if they want to be mega successful.

 

Dana, I have to disagree with you once more.  Let's be clear here, WoW didn't perfect anything aside from how to market it's game.  To use your analogy regarding periods in art.  In WoW's case, it's not the painting or the style, but rather the marketing of that painting or style that is the measure for WoW's success.  Just because everyone was told to go see painting A at exhibit X while painting B sits in a little known gallery somewhere else, doesn't mean that painting A has perfected the style.

If you polled the majority of people, or glimpsed user ratings for the majority of gaming sites, INCLUDING THIS ONE, you'll notice a trend; Wow isn't listed within the top tier of games, even in it's own genre.  Most people who I've run into refer to some other game that they've played as being a much more enjoyable experience. In addition, I've met numerous people who would rather be playing something else, but are on the "WoW train" because all of their friends are.  Furthermore the majority of those "friends" they are playing WoW with haven't even tried other MMO's and therefore don't have a clue as to what they may or may not be missing in another game.

Finally, while the marketing for WoW has greatly expanded thus increasing the number of players to what we see now, most of the original WoW players or die hard MMOers would likely agree that WoW, as a "picture" or "style", has taken a significant turn for the worse. If you took the brains behind WoW's marketing genius out of the equation would we even be having this discussion?

Just because McDonald's sells more hamburgers than any other, it by no means, is any indication that they have perfected the style.  I'd still much rather have a burger from my local steakhouse.

 

No worries, I wouldn't write the articles if I thought everyone would agree with me. That would be awfully boring!

A few notes though. Ask a serious art historian and they usually won't name that "perfector" as their favorite. What that person did, the guy who "perfected the style" is market his stuff, get in front of the most people or convince the Pope to pay for the most of it.

So, regardless of what you think of WoW and its quality, it is the definitive MMO of this generation and there is no way around it. It is and given the lead it has on every other game ever made in this genre, it will be remembered as such.

Your note about popularity is a peculiarity I've noticed as well, but honestly, I think the explanation is easier than you might imagine. MMO fans play or are aware of WoW. WoW fans do not necessarily even know there are other MMOs.

Honestly, based solely on subscriptions, WoW should be far and away the biggest traffic generator on this site. It isn't. By contrast, some sites you'd glance at and call a "WoW fansite" get more traffic than this site does, and we're not exactly small.

They're two separate communities that no one has fully integrated into each other yet. I've spoken to more people than I can remember who ask what I do and when I say I work for "MMORPG.com" they cannot even get the acronym right. If I say "it's a kind of game, like WoW," they know exactly what I mean.

So, arguments of quality totally set aside... WoW is the definitive game in this genre. Arguing otherwise is a bit nieve.

Dana, I in no way would argue that WoW isn't the definitive game in this genre. I am arguing exactly that WoW IS the definitive game. My disagreement with you is in regards to how it got there.  You stated that they "perfected the style". WoW as game or style is far from perfect. I say that they have perfected the marketing for that style. And from reading the second paragraph of your reply you agree with me as you just reiterated what I'm getting at! You just stated above in your second paragraph:

"A few notes though. Ask a serious art historian and they usually won't name that "perfector" as their favorite. What that person did, the guy who "perfected the style" is market his stuff, get in front of the most people or convince the Pope to pay for the most of it."

That is what I'm saying exactly! What Blizzard did was market their game, get in front of the most people and do the best job convincing those people to pay for it.

Oh and in addition, your second to last paragraph states...

"They're two separate communities that no one has fully integrated into each other yet. I've spoken to more people than I can remember who ask what I do and when I say I work for "MMORPG.com" they cannot even get the acronym right. If I say "it's a kind of game, like WoW," they know exactly what I mean."

...which further proves what I've been saying all along (read my McDonald's analogy).

(Edit) On second glance your whole reply just proves what I've been saying.

Originally posted by MrcdesOwnr

Dana, I in no way would argue that WoW isn't the definitive game in this genre. I am arguing exactly that WoW IS the definitive game. My disagreement with you is in regards to how it got there.  You stated that they "perfected the style". WoW as game or style is far from perfect. I say that they have perfected the marketing for that style. And from reading the second paragraph of your reply you agree with me as you just reiterated what I'm getting at! You just stated above in your second paragraph:

"A few notes though. Ask a serious art historian and they usually won't name that "perfector" as their favorite. What that person did, the guy who "perfected the style" is market his stuff, get in front of the most people or convince the Pope to pay for the most of it."

 

That is what I'm saying exactly! What Blizzard did was market their game, get in front of the most people and do the best job convincing those people to pay for it.

Oh and in addition, your second to last paragraph states...

"They're two separate communities that no one has fully integrated into each other yet. I've spoken to more people than I can remember who ask what I do and when I say I work for "MMORPG.com" they cannot even get the acronym right. If I say "it's a kind of game, like WoW," they know exactly what I mean."

...which further proves what I've been saying all along (read my McDonald's analogy).

Right, but my point is... it doesn't matter how they took that mantle. They took it.

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by MrcdesOwnr

Dana, I in no way would argue that WoW isn't the definitive game in this genre. I am arguing exactly that WoW IS the definitive game. My disagreement with you is in regards to how it got there.  You stated that they "perfected the style". WoW as game or style is far from perfect. I say that they have perfected the marketing for that style. And from reading the second paragraph of your reply you agree with me as you just reiterated what I'm getting at! You just stated above in your second paragraph:

"A few notes though. Ask a serious art historian and they usually won't name that "perfector" as their favorite. What that person did, the guy who "perfected the style" is market his stuff, get in front of the most people or convince the Pope to pay for the most of it."

 

That is what I'm saying exactly! What Blizzard did was market their game, get in front of the most people and do the best job convincing those people to pay for it.

Oh and in addition, your second to last paragraph states...

"They're two separate communities that no one has fully integrated into each other yet. I've spoken to more people than I can remember who ask what I do and when I say I work for "MMORPG.com" they cannot even get the acronym right. If I say "it's a kind of game, like WoW," they know exactly what I mean."

...which further proves what I've been saying all along (read my McDonald's analogy).

Right, but my point is... it doesn't matter how they took that mantle. They took it.

I give up!  

A MMO without levels or any advancement point grinds needs to happen.

Final Fantasy XIV promises "no traditional experience point system" for advancement... could this be the mega-huge title game to break the mold and set the new standard?

It's as simple as unlocking content through exploration and adventure versus unlocking content via numerical inflation.

WOW originally had it almost right with attunement quests.

You had to progress a story before you could unlock the next chapter.

The problem was that they were picking up new subscribers so fast and no one wanted to go back and do the old attunement stuff, they just wanted to be able to hop in and join in on the fun. This is totally understandable.

I think the biggest mistake they made was making attunement quests require so much group work. It became a game of convincing your friends or guildies to run you through older, obsolete content or force you to PUG it.

I guess they originally viewed it as you had to progress from solo to small group to large group content, which is totally fine and 100% the way it should be but later on once the small group stuff becomes obsolete, or you add more large group stuff that requires you to go back to obsolete raid stuff.... you create problems and you have to cater to the masses who just want to catch up and join in the fun.

This is why they eliminated attunements.

Better solution? Don't tie unlocking new content to old content. You shouldn't have to raid Naxxaramas to raid Ulduar. But you should have new content, new stories and new adventures to go through both solo and in small groups to unlock the new large group stuff. This way everyone is reset and starts at the same place and you get to progress more naturally.

To really make this all work and be perfect you have to get rid of the numerical inflation that says that the new raid/content needs to have better loot and use higher numbers....

It's a horizontal progression, breadth of content, versus verticle progression otherwise known to many as linear content.

And the only real way to do that is to remove levels or any other type of advancement points.

Instead of increasing the level cap and creating new more powerful gear with bigger numbers and making acquiring these things the SOUL point of advancing your character...

Count on the fact that the content is new and interesting and different and the gear is new and different and people WILL pour to it like moths to the flame.

Imagine if WoW never raised the level cap and gear never advanced beyond a single tier level for raiding....

People would still have done all the new raids and explored the new content and completed the new dungeons.. why? because it was new!

Tier 2 wasn't better then Tier 1 it was just different in looks and different in stats, not better. Add more choice, more variety, more side-ways horizontal progression, more cool stuff to do and see... don't make the old stuff obsolete through a game of number inflation.

We didn't make WOW a gear progression game by trying to min/max with the latest gear, Blizzard made WOW a gear progression game by relying on an archaic system of number inflation and calling it content.

I have not read this thread [yet], but Dana is spot on correct.

This is going to be an ugly generalization, but mmo players lose game play focus due to experience bars/levels.  Gaining levels becomes more important than the activities they are doing to gain those levels.  That is also why there is the term 'end game'.  It is nothing more than a reference to that point in time when your character runs out of experience bars to fill up and must find something else to do.  For some strange reason everyone is in a hurry to get there. 

There is way to much focus on levels in mmos and not enough on the actual game content. 

MrcdesOwnr,

I understand that the investors in an MMO want to tie their money to the next McDonald's or Nike, which is why I believe the next breakthrough MMO won't likely come from a corp. like Blizzard (though if it did i wouldn't be surprised).

Freedom to create an MMO that breaks boundaries, changing the way we play and approach the game, will require an independence from the big names.

heerobya,

Inflation is an interesting concept and how its used in MMOs needs to be addressed.

Horizontal progression is underutilized in my opinion, if not simply because of the easy way inflation in the game works.

As I said, I'm not an expert, but i do have a feel for what a next-generation MMO should include and as such, I'm just expressing an opinion.

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Beautiful. Just...beautiful.

And that's something that Turbine got right in Asheron's Call 1. Sure, it had levels, but that wasn't the focus. I can't EVER remember worrying about levels while playing AC other than as a "litmus" for whether I should attack a creature or not. "leveling up" wasn't the point in AC. Going out and exploring, finding new places that were added in the monthly updates, the truly randomness of their loot drop system...those are the things that grabbed me, hooked me. There was no "endgame". There was just the never old satisfaction "boldly going where you hadn't before".

You know, adventuring. I think that's where alot of companies have lost their way, too. They shifted focus from "adventurer" and locked focus on "hero".

The level based system is the Staples "easy button" for developers who want Have CEOs and shareholders whinings sitting on top of their monitors day in and out. "Get it done as soon as possible" is practically pumped through the speakers like the Indianapolis Colts pumping crowd noise through their stadium speakers.

I honestly,very truly hope that you take your "access" to this industry to heart and try to convey this message when you have the opportunity to these companies. I really don't believe they (management) visit websites such as this (too worried about making tee times) and someone needs to convey as much as possible at these E3's and GDCs that the natives are restless. The vocal ones are here, sure, but just because the greater majority aren't on forums like theses doesn't mean they don't feel the same way. I'm of the opinion the Bystander Effect is in full effect here. People just figure they aren't the only one that feels that way so someone in the customer base must be conveying the same sentiment to the industry.

Will there ever be another Asheron's Call? It's been 10 years, maybe its time. :D

Well, perhaps then if they just didn't display all of the mathematical data about each character, including levels, stats and such, it would be a bit different. Perhaps that alone wouldn't change much though, but it would be the first step torwards something new at least. Either way, the concept of levels nowadays has no purpose to anyone other than power levelers, such people always want numbers to boast their determination to spend time in front of the computer grinding, heck, why do we truly need numbers to be shown anyways? We had warriors in real life, and they never needed numbers to fight, they used their own intuition. It would be interesting if such a game had a skill specialization system similar to UO's, but with no numbers shown, a system in which characters would get more muscular by bashing monsters instead of increasing their STR points, and perhaps this could be noticeable from their physical characteristics, not from some numbers. Numbers just seem like something inherited from tabletop RPGs that we won't be getting rid of anytime soon.