As Your World Turns
There's no question that it's tough trying to provide a believable rationale for a game that collects thousands of players together in one place while still making each one of them feel like the centerpiece of the story. Earlier I mentioned that writing for MMOs has some unique challenges: achieving that sense of individual player importance is probably the biggest one. But fear not, aspiring MMO writer, for I also mentioned some unique rewards. Well, I'm about to cover the biggest one.
Ask any game developer, and they'll tell you it's a very satisfying experience to finish a title and ship it off to the store. But you know what's even more satisfying than that? Continuing to work on a game AFTER it ships to the store. No, really! For a writer, this is an invaluable opportunity to advance and evolve the epic story that drives and defines the game world.
Think of it this way: how great was the movie Star Wars? Had no sequels ever been made, it would still be a classic, but it would have left a lot of people wondering what happened next. Did Luke ever finish his training to become a Jedi? Does he beat Darth Vader? (I know, again with Darth Vader. It's an unhealthy fixation).
How much better was it that we got an entire trilogy, with a complete arc of character development for Luke Skywalker? As a standalone movie, Star Wars was pretty large in scope, but the trilogy was EPIC. And then we got three more movies, and the scope of the two trilogies combined was REALLY, REALLY EPIC!
The same could be said for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or all of those Star Trek television shows and movies, all of the Stargate stuff, and so on. These are all mega-franchises that thrived well beyond the first book, film or television show. As a result, their creators got to tell some really big stories.
This kind of big, epic storytelling can happen in MMOs, too. Case in point: the game that did it first, and in this writer's opinion, best.
Asheron's Call launched in November of 1999, offering players a huge, mostly seamless world to explore. This was supported by a compelling backstory and an abandonment of the typical fantasy archetypal races in favor of entirely new creatures. Gone were such familiar critters as elves, dwarfs, dragons and orcs. Instead we got three human cultures and an array of monsters with names like "shreth", "tumerok", "banderling" and "olthoi". It might have been enough to publish this rather unique spin on the tried-and-true fantasy setting, crack open a cold one and call it a day. Ah, but the mad story-wizards at Turbine were only getting warmed up.
Several weeks after launch, the first of the game's promised monthly updates arrived. The land of Dereth was plunged into an unusually ferocious winter - a concept that I'm sure anyone living in the United States for the past three months can appreciate. We learned that ancient liches (one of the few creatures that AC shared with mainstream fantasy) were using an infernal machine to alter the climate, sending temperatures across the globe plummeting. And this was just - please forgive the horrible pun here - the tip of the iceberg.
)
Over the next several years, a vast and sweeping chronicle unfolded before the players' eyes. The agents of the dread Bael'zharon, a sort of meta-demon-slash-prince-of-all-evil, were conspiring to bring about their master's return. As this dire ritual neared completion, the whole world was altered. Skies turned blood red, lightning storms showed flickers of a huge, winged monster lurking in the sky, and town criers declared doom and catastrophe in every settlement.
It was awesome.
The world was changing, the story was evolving, and the players could all play a part in it. If you logged in at the right time, the Dereth you stepped into looked and felt radically different than the pleasant fantasy setting you might have logged out of just a few months previous.
And Turbine didn't stop there. Eventually, they even went as far as to destroy some of the game's major hubs of civilization, placing eerie, floating spires in the air above them. Who created these massive floating fortresses? Why were certain high-level players kidnapped, taken up into these unreachable citadels and interrogated? Who was behind it all?
These mysteries gave the game's players a compelling reason to return every time a new monthly patch was pushed live. I found myself unable to stay unsubscribed to the game for more than a few weeks, because I just HAD to know what was going to happen next. Once you realized just how extensively Turbine was willing to alter the game world in order to expand upon the unfolding saga, just about anything was on the table. The announcement of a new monthly updated inevitably prompted the question "what will they do next?"
Such ambitious storytelling made for a very memorable game, and one that pushed the boundaries of its format even by today's standards. It must have been incredibly fun to be a writer working on Asheron's Call, figuring out how to unveil the next world-altering chapter of your epic plot.
Conclusion
Just as MMOs are a unique breed of game, the task of the MMO game writer is also unique. It's no small feat creating a story so large in scope that thousands of players can all participate and still feel important on an individual level. The best MMO writers achieve this in a very believable way, preserving immersion and a sense of personal heroism that makes every player feel like a vital part of the story.
The rewards for success are an audience of tens or even hundreds of thousands, and a compelling narrative that grows and evolves over time, keeping those players coming back for more.
What writer could ask for more than that?
