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I've been beta testing playing quite a bit of MMORPG's lately and they've gotten me wondering if MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs for those who don't know) are starting to plateau off in terms of playability and originality. Common traits in MMORPGs so far:
1. Unique or exotic environment/setting
2. Science Fiction or Fantasy genre
3. Experience based method of 'improving' your characters, in one form or another, leading to 'leveling' as character improvement.
4. Unique items as rewards for character improvement.
5. Facilities to allow players to socialise and form clans/hierarchies/groups etc.
6. Open ended nature of MMORPGs. Lack of player-controlled storyline or facilities for player-based plot development.
I'm sure people can chip in more common characteristics that all/most MMORPGs have, but these seemed to be it. But it is 6 that seems to be the problem with MMORPGs thus far. If you compare RPGs like Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights or even Diablo/Dungeon Seige, they have an ending you are working your way towards, you level up in order to meet that ending. In all the MMORPGs so far, there aren't any endings. Maybe the companies are milking the MMORPGs for all they're worth and endings are detrimental to the financial prospects. Maybe developers are simply not worried or bothered about endings.
Think of a show like Babylon 5 which from the outset, had a clear 5-year span and a storyline throughout the entire series that makes it cohesive in some way. Viewers knew that the final season was coming. Look at X-Files on the other hand, where players want to see some closure, and after 9 seasons, some felt cheated of an ending. Initially, MMORPGs are attractive because of the social factor - you play with your mates and it's fun when you do that. But once you move away from the socialisation aspects, you start to wonder where is the game heading. Anarchy Online supposedly promises a storyline, but it seems that they're struggling with that, and losing players along the way.
Are endings or closure important for MMORPG players? Does it at least give you something that you know you can look forward to? I remember vividly the endings I experienced at the closing of Beta testing for some online game where they literally brought armageddon upon the beta worlds. You knew you were going to die, but you were determined to go out with a bang! Or are MMORPG players so fickle minded that the minute the newest coolest one comes out (read Star Wars Galaxies), everyone will ditch their level 90 characters which they've worked so hard to bring up, and adorn blaster rifles instead?
I personally think MMORPGs ran out of ideas a very long time ago, and all they've been doing since is a rehash of a handful of ideas, re-arranged into a slightly different style each time. The genre needs a real injection of shazam (Shazam?) else it'll go stale really quickly. RTS has just about managed to survive by incorporating new ideas here and there (often borrowed from other genres, such as first person viewpoints in Battlezone or RPG elements in games like Warcraft 3) but the genre is still spawning far too many bland identical titles. The situation is much worse for MMORPGs, and people can't be expected to shell out to play the same old rubbish forever.
But it's early days. I don't think people would buy FPSs if developers suddenly decided to do away with the actual shooting or killing. There are just certain ideas at the core of every genre that although it may be beneficial in the long run to do away with, developers are too scared to remove. Why tamper with a winning formula? If MMORPGs were truly hitting a plateau, why would players constantly hop to the "next best thing". If every game is the same and nothing new is being done to improve the genre, why would people bother to buy the new releases. Or if players truly were so fickle, why do you still find so many playing UO, EQ, AC et al? Of course, people buy new games because they want a new experience, it's the same with any genre, why should players of mmorpgs be singled out? mmorpgs are progressing, as any other genre is. Perhaps not as rapidly as others, but they are in their uber-infancy. And due to their net-based only nature perhaps they experience more adversity than their offline "multiplayer when we choose it" brethren.
MMORPG players should be singled out because they are paying effective four to fivefolds the price of owning a game (easily) for the privilege of playing it. A new MMORPG (a hot title) will probably cost 30 pounds for the CD alone, and then 12 mths subscription (assuming you don't have a free mth) of about 10/12 pounds, you're chalking out 150 pounds for a game to play for a year. That's why MMORPGs are such cashcows, if successful. But you have to ask yourself why would players pay 150 pounds for a year's worth of gaming in a persistent world? Socialising? Lots of other forms of socialisation exists but don't forget either that the average hardcore MMORPG player will be playing it about 4 hours a day easily, which means his real life socialisation is often sacrificed (I speaketh from personal experience). What about another psychological trait found in gamers - obsessive compulsive complexes? You *have* to find all the hidden treasures in Tomb Raider/RTCW etc. You *have* to have the full set of armour and weapon in Diablo II. You have to level up your character. After all, it is the obsessive gamers that companies are after since they're the ones that will stay in the MMORPG the longest. Any UO player that started the game from release and is still playing now would have paid about 350 pounds by now for the privilege of keeping their character in a world which may or may not shut down eventually. The adversity with MMORPG is because of the *commitment* that players commit to - time, effort, and especially money - into the game.
The question as always with any genre is how is it progressing? The core of any FPS (or any other genre) has been always the same but then you get original games which cross boundaries (fps/rpg or fps/rts) which may or may not be successful. You also get new genre-specific games that are exciting and refreshing because of its cleverly scripted storyline(mohaa). The problem is that MMORPGs (admittedly at its infancy) is struggling with storylines and creativity. The outlays and costs involved in setting up any kind of MMORPG are huge, and not within the scope of most publishers. I'm surprised that work on Everquest 2 is well underway, as I fully undersand the reason UO2 was cancelled - they already had a profitable MMORPG that a lot of people wouldn't necessarily want to leave.
MMORPGs are difficult to both wind up (get going) and then wind down, and I imagine Everquest 2 will take on lots of Everquest players, effectively keeping the half-million or so fanbase that generate so much revenue. Not that the R really belongs in MMORPG anyway. They are more about committed, repetitive excercises than true roleplaying, discovery and all that other kind of stuff we get offline. One thing I'd REALLY like to see more of is MMORPGs that you can initially play offline - a way to train up your character and get a good deal of experience with the title without having to pay any phone bills or monthly charges. After all, all you'll miss out on is a bunch of other people who don't roleplay anyway and just want to kill you.
In fact, wait a minute, that's just an RPG like Diablo. So people just pay £10 a month to play Diablo-like games online with the extra appeal of 10 year old boys who want to kill them? Let 'em. I'd rather people like that were stuck indoors playing computer games 24/7 than getting involved in my life. There is one heck of a lot that could be done with MMORPGs to make them more conducive to roleplay, but number one on my list is the banishment of levels in their current form. I don't care how good you are, if fifty people blitz you at once in real life, you are going to die. No matter how hard you swing it, that sword is not going to slice through full-plate like it was butter. Yet as it stands, the only way to get into a position where you can play a valuable part is to either fight constantly, or be in a group with other people who are doing so. Even in games like Neocron, which push the idea of a virtual environment, there's this mad concept that unless you've killed a hundred billion gazillion rats, you're not qualified to deliver expensive packages.
There's plenty that could be done to push more social elements into the fore. Add things like chess games with movable pieces, force players to eat, and thus into communal areas. Encourage trading between cities rather than having everyone flogging kit at the same price. Put character elements behind the scenes a bit more - a particular character being created with a number of secrets that only emerge after a bit of play rather than a blank template. Play with perception - Og the Orc seeing a lump of metal and a snake, Brian the Dwarf seeing a nugget of gold and a venomous serpent and Sarah the Elf seeing a lump of precious metal and a rattlesnake. Instead of levels, push the traits concept. MMORPGs is a genre that have been running for years, but only their first few pages have been written. Lots of people want to do more, but they can't risk failing. Ultima Online is hideously complicated from a design point of view, and if you want to challenge it then you have to do from the point of launch. Everquest is the template, but because it's the only one around, nobody really knows what else people would risk. Moreover, these games are hard enough to write when you're just working to a template - never mind having to create something from scratch. This isn't an excuse for failure - making games is hard - but it is the reason that most people can't even approach the idea of giving it a try.
MMORPGs...
I reckon these things are (or, at least, could be) very powerful.
One thing I don't think a lot of people think about when it comes to computer games is their exact role and/or function. We just know that they're fun without really worrying why. I've played a lot of computer games and the odd console game in my time and the following is my my personal interpretation of my experiences:
"Games are either sports or stories".
What I mean by this is that some games we play for the competition, the challenge, such that we learn a rule set, familiarise with an environment and then make choices based on what we think will result in the desired outcome. This might sound like a rather strange sport but I think there is a lot of common ground. Imagine a game of snooker - practicing on your own allows you to try and master the game (single-player) and then you play against someone else to compare what you've learnt (multi-player). I think this applies to the obvious games like FPS's, simulations and beat-em-ups, and also to RTS's (strategy titles in general). However, I think this also applies to RPGs - I think that they are, in a way, a sport. From the outset, it would seem that they're about the story (with the Fallout and BG series confirming this) but there are those that you can play again and again (the infamous Diablo series) with the sport arising in the pursuit of the ultimate character.
I think it also parallels with the modification of sports cars, Fast and the Furious stylee, in that you spend time and effort in honing your character and then comparing it with others to see if you're the best. I think there is some adventure in the reaching of the high levels but for an RPG to be repetitive then the addiction has to be in the character improvement. I think the successful MMORPGs have been sport-orientated in that it's all been about getting that hard-as-a-brick-made-of-nails character and then handing it to something or someone that walks round giving it the gob. I think the level treadmill is a familiar term. However, on the flipside, we have the games that act as stories. Some RPGs are one-shot (sometimes 2, dear Baldurs Gate) with their attraction/addiction being the detailed plot. The other obvious format of story-games is the adventure game (Monkey Island series - me sheds a tear) and these are almost always one-shot.
I think that if you want your MMORPGs to be more of a story than a sport, then you have to make the whole online game revolve around a global plot of some sorts. To allow this plot to then be influenced by the actions of the players in the game. I think that rather than just code an online domain/arena, you would need to code a world.
Which brings me to Neocron.
Yeah, I've been looking into it a bit and reading the creator's vision for it. It's got a lot of good intention and the offline demo does imply great things. They're about to begin their grand plot but, wisely, they've decided that it'll be completely scripted in terms of the ending being the same regardless of which factions destroy each other. I'll confess - it looks like it could be good, but for such a game to attract people on a role-playing basis for the long term, then it's going to need a long-term plot (Eastenders-style). And for the role-playing to be believable, then everyone within the game will need to appreciate their place and play their role. 12 year-old kids will not do this.
I've always seen one-shot plot games as interactive movies/adventures. Every other player in the single-player games is an NPC as this allows the creator to completely impose his vision on the player. For an MMORPG that intends to be story-driven, the creator will need control of the world and the only way they could do this is by influence. As such, I suggest that they would have to employ people purely to play the game as key figures in the world that they've created and their job being to guide the game and its players in the direction that the creator desires. In other words, I think the creator needs to create characters that have influence in the world and then hire people to control them in a manner fitting with the creator's agenda - the creator needs their invisible hand.
So, to summarise, I reckon that for a plot-orientated MMORPG to be successful it would need continual plot control and world manipulation from the POV of the creator. I think this would also need, to some degree, understanding and cooperation from the players.
Kind of like confucianism.
If such a complete world was ever created, what a powerful thing it would be, an absorbing world that exists purely on the audio and visual inputs - if it took any more of the senses then I think powerful would read as dangerous.
Thanks for reading (and sorry to drag on),
Flux.
1. Unique or exotic environment/setting
2. Science Fiction or Fantasy genre
3. Experience based method of 'improving' your characters, in one form or another, leading to 'leveling' as character improvement.
4. Unique items as rewards for character improvement.
5. Facilities to allow players to socialise and form clans/hierarchies/groups etc.
6. Open ended nature of MMORPGs. Lack of player-controlled storyline or facilities for player-based plot development.
I'm sure people can chip in more common characteristics that all/most MMORPGs have, but these seemed to be it. But it is 6 that seems to be the problem with MMORPGs thus far. If you compare RPGs like Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights or even Diablo/Dungeon Seige, they have an ending you are working your way towards, you level up in order to meet that ending. In all the MMORPGs so far, there aren't any endings. Maybe the companies are milking the MMORPGs for all they're worth and endings are detrimental to the financial prospects. Maybe developers are simply not worried or bothered about endings.
Think of a show like Babylon 5 which from the outset, had a clear 5-year span and a storyline throughout the entire series that makes it cohesive in some way. Viewers knew that the final season was coming. Look at X-Files on the other hand, where players want to see some closure, and after 9 seasons, some felt cheated of an ending. Initially, MMORPGs are attractive because of the social factor - you play with your mates and it's fun when you do that. But once you move away from the socialisation aspects, you start to wonder where is the game heading. Anarchy Online supposedly promises a storyline, but it seems that they're struggling with that, and losing players along the way.
Are endings or closure important for MMORPG players? Does it at least give you something that you know you can look forward to? I remember vividly the endings I experienced at the closing of Beta testing for some online game where they literally brought armageddon upon the beta worlds. You knew you were going to die, but you were determined to go out with a bang! Or are MMORPG players so fickle minded that the minute the newest coolest one comes out (read Star Wars Galaxies), everyone will ditch their level 90 characters which they've worked so hard to bring up, and adorn blaster rifles instead?
I personally think MMORPGs ran out of ideas a very long time ago, and all they've been doing since is a rehash of a handful of ideas, re-arranged into a slightly different style each time. The genre needs a real injection of shazam (Shazam?) else it'll go stale really quickly. RTS has just about managed to survive by incorporating new ideas here and there (often borrowed from other genres, such as first person viewpoints in Battlezone or RPG elements in games like Warcraft 3) but the genre is still spawning far too many bland identical titles. The situation is much worse for MMORPGs, and people can't be expected to shell out to play the same old rubbish forever.
But it's early days. I don't think people would buy FPSs if developers suddenly decided to do away with the actual shooting or killing. There are just certain ideas at the core of every genre that although it may be beneficial in the long run to do away with, developers are too scared to remove. Why tamper with a winning formula? If MMORPGs were truly hitting a plateau, why would players constantly hop to the "next best thing". If every game is the same and nothing new is being done to improve the genre, why would people bother to buy the new releases. Or if players truly were so fickle, why do you still find so many playing UO, EQ, AC et al? Of course, people buy new games because they want a new experience, it's the same with any genre, why should players of mmorpgs be singled out? mmorpgs are progressing, as any other genre is. Perhaps not as rapidly as others, but they are in their uber-infancy. And due to their net-based only nature perhaps they experience more adversity than their offline "multiplayer when we choose it" brethren.
MMORPG players should be singled out because they are paying effective four to fivefolds the price of owning a game (easily) for the privilege of playing it. A new MMORPG (a hot title) will probably cost 30 pounds for the CD alone, and then 12 mths subscription (assuming you don't have a free mth) of about 10/12 pounds, you're chalking out 150 pounds for a game to play for a year. That's why MMORPGs are such cashcows, if successful. But you have to ask yourself why would players pay 150 pounds for a year's worth of gaming in a persistent world? Socialising? Lots of other forms of socialisation exists but don't forget either that the average hardcore MMORPG player will be playing it about 4 hours a day easily, which means his real life socialisation is often sacrificed (I speaketh from personal experience). What about another psychological trait found in gamers - obsessive compulsive complexes? You *have* to find all the hidden treasures in Tomb Raider/RTCW etc. You *have* to have the full set of armour and weapon in Diablo II. You have to level up your character. After all, it is the obsessive gamers that companies are after since they're the ones that will stay in the MMORPG the longest. Any UO player that started the game from release and is still playing now would have paid about 350 pounds by now for the privilege of keeping their character in a world which may or may not shut down eventually. The adversity with MMORPG is because of the *commitment* that players commit to - time, effort, and especially money - into the game.
The question as always with any genre is how is it progressing? The core of any FPS (or any other genre) has been always the same but then you get original games which cross boundaries (fps/rpg or fps/rts) which may or may not be successful. You also get new genre-specific games that are exciting and refreshing because of its cleverly scripted storyline(mohaa). The problem is that MMORPGs (admittedly at its infancy) is struggling with storylines and creativity. The outlays and costs involved in setting up any kind of MMORPG are huge, and not within the scope of most publishers. I'm surprised that work on Everquest 2 is well underway, as I fully undersand the reason UO2 was cancelled - they already had a profitable MMORPG that a lot of people wouldn't necessarily want to leave.
MMORPGs are difficult to both wind up (get going) and then wind down, and I imagine Everquest 2 will take on lots of Everquest players, effectively keeping the half-million or so fanbase that generate so much revenue. Not that the R really belongs in MMORPG anyway. They are more about committed, repetitive excercises than true roleplaying, discovery and all that other kind of stuff we get offline. One thing I'd REALLY like to see more of is MMORPGs that you can initially play offline - a way to train up your character and get a good deal of experience with the title without having to pay any phone bills or monthly charges. After all, all you'll miss out on is a bunch of other people who don't roleplay anyway and just want to kill you.
In fact, wait a minute, that's just an RPG like Diablo. So people just pay £10 a month to play Diablo-like games online with the extra appeal of 10 year old boys who want to kill them? Let 'em. I'd rather people like that were stuck indoors playing computer games 24/7 than getting involved in my life. There is one heck of a lot that could be done with MMORPGs to make them more conducive to roleplay, but number one on my list is the banishment of levels in their current form. I don't care how good you are, if fifty people blitz you at once in real life, you are going to die. No matter how hard you swing it, that sword is not going to slice through full-plate like it was butter. Yet as it stands, the only way to get into a position where you can play a valuable part is to either fight constantly, or be in a group with other people who are doing so. Even in games like Neocron, which push the idea of a virtual environment, there's this mad concept that unless you've killed a hundred billion gazillion rats, you're not qualified to deliver expensive packages.
There's plenty that could be done to push more social elements into the fore. Add things like chess games with movable pieces, force players to eat, and thus into communal areas. Encourage trading between cities rather than having everyone flogging kit at the same price. Put character elements behind the scenes a bit more - a particular character being created with a number of secrets that only emerge after a bit of play rather than a blank template. Play with perception - Og the Orc seeing a lump of metal and a snake, Brian the Dwarf seeing a nugget of gold and a venomous serpent and Sarah the Elf seeing a lump of precious metal and a rattlesnake. Instead of levels, push the traits concept. MMORPGs is a genre that have been running for years, but only their first few pages have been written. Lots of people want to do more, but they can't risk failing. Ultima Online is hideously complicated from a design point of view, and if you want to challenge it then you have to do from the point of launch. Everquest is the template, but because it's the only one around, nobody really knows what else people would risk. Moreover, these games are hard enough to write when you're just working to a template - never mind having to create something from scratch. This isn't an excuse for failure - making games is hard - but it is the reason that most people can't even approach the idea of giving it a try.
MMORPGs...
I reckon these things are (or, at least, could be) very powerful.
One thing I don't think a lot of people think about when it comes to computer games is their exact role and/or function. We just know that they're fun without really worrying why. I've played a lot of computer games and the odd console game in my time and the following is my my personal interpretation of my experiences:
"Games are either sports or stories".
What I mean by this is that some games we play for the competition, the challenge, such that we learn a rule set, familiarise with an environment and then make choices based on what we think will result in the desired outcome. This might sound like a rather strange sport but I think there is a lot of common ground. Imagine a game of snooker - practicing on your own allows you to try and master the game (single-player) and then you play against someone else to compare what you've learnt (multi-player). I think this applies to the obvious games like FPS's, simulations and beat-em-ups, and also to RTS's (strategy titles in general). However, I think this also applies to RPGs - I think that they are, in a way, a sport. From the outset, it would seem that they're about the story (with the Fallout and BG series confirming this) but there are those that you can play again and again (the infamous Diablo series) with the sport arising in the pursuit of the ultimate character.
I think it also parallels with the modification of sports cars, Fast and the Furious stylee, in that you spend time and effort in honing your character and then comparing it with others to see if you're the best. I think there is some adventure in the reaching of the high levels but for an RPG to be repetitive then the addiction has to be in the character improvement. I think the successful MMORPGs have been sport-orientated in that it's all been about getting that hard-as-a-brick-made-of-nails character and then handing it to something or someone that walks round giving it the gob. I think the level treadmill is a familiar term. However, on the flipside, we have the games that act as stories. Some RPGs are one-shot (sometimes 2, dear Baldurs Gate) with their attraction/addiction being the detailed plot. The other obvious format of story-games is the adventure game (Monkey Island series - me sheds a tear) and these are almost always one-shot.
I think that if you want your MMORPGs to be more of a story than a sport, then you have to make the whole online game revolve around a global plot of some sorts. To allow this plot to then be influenced by the actions of the players in the game. I think that rather than just code an online domain/arena, you would need to code a world.
Which brings me to Neocron.
Yeah, I've been looking into it a bit and reading the creator's vision for it. It's got a lot of good intention and the offline demo does imply great things. They're about to begin their grand plot but, wisely, they've decided that it'll be completely scripted in terms of the ending being the same regardless of which factions destroy each other. I'll confess - it looks like it could be good, but for such a game to attract people on a role-playing basis for the long term, then it's going to need a long-term plot (Eastenders-style). And for the role-playing to be believable, then everyone within the game will need to appreciate their place and play their role. 12 year-old kids will not do this.
I've always seen one-shot plot games as interactive movies/adventures. Every other player in the single-player games is an NPC as this allows the creator to completely impose his vision on the player. For an MMORPG that intends to be story-driven, the creator will need control of the world and the only way they could do this is by influence. As such, I suggest that they would have to employ people purely to play the game as key figures in the world that they've created and their job being to guide the game and its players in the direction that the creator desires. In other words, I think the creator needs to create characters that have influence in the world and then hire people to control them in a manner fitting with the creator's agenda - the creator needs their invisible hand.
So, to summarise, I reckon that for a plot-orientated MMORPG to be successful it would need continual plot control and world manipulation from the POV of the creator. I think this would also need, to some degree, understanding and cooperation from the players.
Kind of like confucianism.
If such a complete world was ever created, what a powerful thing it would be, an absorbing world that exists purely on the audio and visual inputs - if it took any more of the senses then I think powerful would read as dangerous.
Thanks for reading (and sorry to drag on),
Flux.
Page:
I was going to say that to cjh but I didn't wanna be rude or scare him off.
Thanks DM, my minion from the third corner of hell :)
Why the * in all your replies damnit!?!!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?
Thanks DM, my minion from the third corner of hell :)
Why the * in all your replies damnit!?!!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?
cjh wrote:
> Whats an MMORPG??? If you don't mind me asking
*
He explained what it meant in the first paragraph of the topic! Geez!
> Whats an MMORPG??? If you don't mind me asking
*
He explained what it meant in the first paragraph of the topic! Geez!
Massively Mutliplayer Online Role-Playing Game :)
Whats an MMORPG??? If you don't mind me asking
personally i would love a babylon 5 game like that. The problem is trying to work in a different storyline for each player so it doesn't get too predictable.
Recently ive been playing Earth and Beyond at a mates house. Thats great because when you interact with NPCs (non player charactures) you get different responce options. The option you pick will change what you end up doing. This means that while many people will follow the same path at the beginning, progress though the game will be very varied from person to person.
Please excuse spelling as i can't be bothered to open word and check it.(there may be errors but who cares)
anyway very good topic. should get you a GAD :)
Recently ive been playing Earth and Beyond at a mates house. Thats great because when you interact with NPCs (non player charactures) you get different responce options. The option you pick will change what you end up doing. This means that while many people will follow the same path at the beginning, progress though the game will be very varied from person to person.
Please excuse spelling as i can't be bothered to open word and check it.(there may be errors but who cares)
anyway very good topic. should get you a GAD :)
Great post Flux, me old mucker. Deserves a GAD... although it did take me rougly 25 minutes to read.
I've been beta testing playing quite a bit of MMORPG's lately and they've gotten me wondering if MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs for those who don't know) are starting to plateau off in terms of playability and originality. Common traits in MMORPGs so far:
1. Unique or exotic environment/setting
2. Science Fiction or Fantasy genre
3. Experience based method of 'improving' your characters, in one form or another, leading to 'leveling' as character improvement.
4. Unique items as rewards for character improvement.
5. Facilities to allow players to socialise and form clans/hierarchies/groups etc.
6. Open ended nature of MMORPGs. Lack of player-controlled storyline or facilities for player-based plot development.
I'm sure people can chip in more common characteristics that all/most MMORPGs have, but these seemed to be it. But it is 6 that seems to be the problem with MMORPGs thus far. If you compare RPGs like Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights or even Diablo/Dungeon Seige, they have an ending you are working your way towards, you level up in order to meet that ending. In all the MMORPGs so far, there aren't any endings. Maybe the companies are milking the MMORPGs for all they're worth and endings are detrimental to the financial prospects. Maybe developers are simply not worried or bothered about endings.
Think of a show like Babylon 5 which from the outset, had a clear 5-year span and a storyline throughout the entire series that makes it cohesive in some way. Viewers knew that the final season was coming. Look at X-Files on the other hand, where players want to see some closure, and after 9 seasons, some felt cheated of an ending. Initially, MMORPGs are attractive because of the social factor - you play with your mates and it's fun when you do that. But once you move away from the socialisation aspects, you start to wonder where is the game heading. Anarchy Online supposedly promises a storyline, but it seems that they're struggling with that, and losing players along the way.
Are endings or closure important for MMORPG players? Does it at least give you something that you know you can look forward to? I remember vividly the endings I experienced at the closing of Beta testing for some online game where they literally brought armageddon upon the beta worlds. You knew you were going to die, but you were determined to go out with a bang! Or are MMORPG players so fickle minded that the minute the newest coolest one comes out (read Star Wars Galaxies), everyone will ditch their level 90 characters which they've worked so hard to bring up, and adorn blaster rifles instead?
I personally think MMORPGs ran out of ideas a very long time ago, and all they've been doing since is a rehash of a handful of ideas, re-arranged into a slightly different style each time. The genre needs a real injection of shazam (Shazam?) else it'll go stale really quickly. RTS has just about managed to survive by incorporating new ideas here and there (often borrowed from other genres, such as first person viewpoints in Battlezone or RPG elements in games like Warcraft 3) but the genre is still spawning far too many bland identical titles. The situation is much worse for MMORPGs, and people can't be expected to shell out to play the same old rubbish forever.
But it's early days. I don't think people would buy FPSs if developers suddenly decided to do away with the actual shooting or killing. There are just certain ideas at the core of every genre that although it may be beneficial in the long run to do away with, developers are too scared to remove. Why tamper with a winning formula? If MMORPGs were truly hitting a plateau, why would players constantly hop to the "next best thing". If every game is the same and nothing new is being done to improve the genre, why would people bother to buy the new releases. Or if players truly were so fickle, why do you still find so many playing UO, EQ, AC et al? Of course, people buy new games because they want a new experience, it's the same with any genre, why should players of mmorpgs be singled out? mmorpgs are progressing, as any other genre is. Perhaps not as rapidly as others, but they are in their uber-infancy. And due to their net-based only nature perhaps they experience more adversity than their offline "multiplayer when we choose it" brethren.
MMORPG players should be singled out because they are paying effective four to fivefolds the price of owning a game (easily) for the privilege of playing it. A new MMORPG (a hot title) will probably cost 30 pounds for the CD alone, and then 12 mths subscription (assuming you don't have a free mth) of about 10/12 pounds, you're chalking out 150 pounds for a game to play for a year. That's why MMORPGs are such cashcows, if successful. But you have to ask yourself why would players pay 150 pounds for a year's worth of gaming in a persistent world? Socialising? Lots of other forms of socialisation exists but don't forget either that the average hardcore MMORPG player will be playing it about 4 hours a day easily, which means his real life socialisation is often sacrificed (I speaketh from personal experience). What about another psychological trait found in gamers - obsessive compulsive complexes? You *have* to find all the hidden treasures in Tomb Raider/RTCW etc. You *have* to have the full set of armour and weapon in Diablo II. You have to level up your character. After all, it is the obsessive gamers that companies are after since they're the ones that will stay in the MMORPG the longest. Any UO player that started the game from release and is still playing now would have paid about 350 pounds by now for the privilege of keeping their character in a world which may or may not shut down eventually. The adversity with MMORPG is because of the *commitment* that players commit to - time, effort, and especially money - into the game.
The question as always with any genre is how is it progressing? The core of any FPS (or any other genre) has been always the same but then you get original games which cross boundaries (fps/rpg or fps/rts) which may or may not be successful. You also get new genre-specific games that are exciting and refreshing because of its cleverly scripted storyline(mohaa). The problem is that MMORPGs (admittedly at its infancy) is struggling with storylines and creativity. The outlays and costs involved in setting up any kind of MMORPG are huge, and not within the scope of most publishers. I'm surprised that work on Everquest 2 is well underway, as I fully undersand the reason UO2 was cancelled - they already had a profitable MMORPG that a lot of people wouldn't necessarily want to leave.
MMORPGs are difficult to both wind up (get going) and then wind down, and I imagine Everquest 2 will take on lots of Everquest players, effectively keeping the half-million or so fanbase that generate so much revenue. Not that the R really belongs in MMORPG anyway. They are more about committed, repetitive excercises than true roleplaying, discovery and all that other kind of stuff we get offline. One thing I'd REALLY like to see more of is MMORPGs that you can initially play offline - a way to train up your character and get a good deal of experience with the title without having to pay any phone bills or monthly charges. After all, all you'll miss out on is a bunch of other people who don't roleplay anyway and just want to kill you.
In fact, wait a minute, that's just an RPG like Diablo. So people just pay £10 a month to play Diablo-like games online with the extra appeal of 10 year old boys who want to kill them? Let 'em. I'd rather people like that were stuck indoors playing computer games 24/7 than getting involved in my life. There is one heck of a lot that could be done with MMORPGs to make them more conducive to roleplay, but number one on my list is the banishment of levels in their current form. I don't care how good you are, if fifty people blitz you at once in real life, you are going to die. No matter how hard you swing it, that sword is not going to slice through full-plate like it was butter. Yet as it stands, the only way to get into a position where you can play a valuable part is to either fight constantly, or be in a group with other people who are doing so. Even in games like Neocron, which push the idea of a virtual environment, there's this mad concept that unless you've killed a hundred billion gazillion rats, you're not qualified to deliver expensive packages.
There's plenty that could be done to push more social elements into the fore. Add things like chess games with movable pieces, force players to eat, and thus into communal areas. Encourage trading between cities rather than having everyone flogging kit at the same price. Put character elements behind the scenes a bit more - a particular character being created with a number of secrets that only emerge after a bit of play rather than a blank template. Play with perception - Og the Orc seeing a lump of metal and a snake, Brian the Dwarf seeing a nugget of gold and a venomous serpent and Sarah the Elf seeing a lump of precious metal and a rattlesnake. Instead of levels, push the traits concept. MMORPGs is a genre that have been running for years, but only their first few pages have been written. Lots of people want to do more, but they can't risk failing. Ultima Online is hideously complicated from a design point of view, and if you want to challenge it then you have to do from the point of launch. Everquest is the template, but because it's the only one around, nobody really knows what else people would risk. Moreover, these games are hard enough to write when you're just working to a template - never mind having to create something from scratch. This isn't an excuse for failure - making games is hard - but it is the reason that most people can't even approach the idea of giving it a try.
MMORPGs...
I reckon these things are (or, at least, could be) very powerful.
One thing I don't think a lot of people think about when it comes to computer games is their exact role and/or function. We just know that they're fun without really worrying why. I've played a lot of computer games and the odd console game in my time and the following is my my personal interpretation of my experiences:
"Games are either sports or stories".
What I mean by this is that some games we play for the competition, the challenge, such that we learn a rule set, familiarise with an environment and then make choices based on what we think will result in the desired outcome. This might sound like a rather strange sport but I think there is a lot of common ground. Imagine a game of snooker - practicing on your own allows you to try and master the game (single-player) and then you play against someone else to compare what you've learnt (multi-player). I think this applies to the obvious games like FPS's, simulations and beat-em-ups, and also to RTS's (strategy titles in general). However, I think this also applies to RPGs - I think that they are, in a way, a sport. From the outset, it would seem that they're about the story (with the Fallout and BG series confirming this) but there are those that you can play again and again (the infamous Diablo series) with the sport arising in the pursuit of the ultimate character.
I think it also parallels with the modification of sports cars, Fast and the Furious stylee, in that you spend time and effort in honing your character and then comparing it with others to see if you're the best. I think there is some adventure in the reaching of the high levels but for an RPG to be repetitive then the addiction has to be in the character improvement. I think the successful MMORPGs have been sport-orientated in that it's all been about getting that hard-as-a-brick-made-of-nails character and then handing it to something or someone that walks round giving it the gob. I think the level treadmill is a familiar term. However, on the flipside, we have the games that act as stories. Some RPGs are one-shot (sometimes 2, dear Baldurs Gate) with their attraction/addiction being the detailed plot. The other obvious format of story-games is the adventure game (Monkey Island series - me sheds a tear) and these are almost always one-shot.
I think that if you want your MMORPGs to be more of a story than a sport, then you have to make the whole online game revolve around a global plot of some sorts. To allow this plot to then be influenced by the actions of the players in the game. I think that rather than just code an online domain/arena, you would need to code a world.
Which brings me to Neocron.
Yeah, I've been looking into it a bit and reading the creator's vision for it. It's got a lot of good intention and the offline demo does imply great things. They're about to begin their grand plot but, wisely, they've decided that it'll be completely scripted in terms of the ending being the same regardless of which factions destroy each other. I'll confess - it looks like it could be good, but for such a game to attract people on a role-playing basis for the long term, then it's going to need a long-term plot (Eastenders-style). And for the role-playing to be believable, then everyone within the game will need to appreciate their place and play their role. 12 year-old kids will not do this.
I've always seen one-shot plot games as interactive movies/adventures. Every other player in the single-player games is an NPC as this allows the creator to completely impose his vision on the player. For an MMORPG that intends to be story-driven, the creator will need control of the world and the only way they could do this is by influence. As such, I suggest that they would have to employ people purely to play the game as key figures in the world that they've created and their job being to guide the game and its players in the direction that the creator desires. In other words, I think the creator needs to create characters that have influence in the world and then hire people to control them in a manner fitting with the creator's agenda - the creator needs their invisible hand.
So, to summarise, I reckon that for a plot-orientated MMORPG to be successful it would need continual plot control and world manipulation from the POV of the creator. I think this would also need, to some degree, understanding and cooperation from the players.
Kind of like confucianism.
If such a complete world was ever created, what a powerful thing it would be, an absorbing world that exists purely on the audio and visual inputs - if it took any more of the senses then I think powerful would read as dangerous.
Thanks for reading (and sorry to drag on),
Flux.
1. Unique or exotic environment/setting
2. Science Fiction or Fantasy genre
3. Experience based method of 'improving' your characters, in one form or another, leading to 'leveling' as character improvement.
4. Unique items as rewards for character improvement.
5. Facilities to allow players to socialise and form clans/hierarchies/groups etc.
6. Open ended nature of MMORPGs. Lack of player-controlled storyline or facilities for player-based plot development.
I'm sure people can chip in more common characteristics that all/most MMORPGs have, but these seemed to be it. But it is 6 that seems to be the problem with MMORPGs thus far. If you compare RPGs like Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights or even Diablo/Dungeon Seige, they have an ending you are working your way towards, you level up in order to meet that ending. In all the MMORPGs so far, there aren't any endings. Maybe the companies are milking the MMORPGs for all they're worth and endings are detrimental to the financial prospects. Maybe developers are simply not worried or bothered about endings.
Think of a show like Babylon 5 which from the outset, had a clear 5-year span and a storyline throughout the entire series that makes it cohesive in some way. Viewers knew that the final season was coming. Look at X-Files on the other hand, where players want to see some closure, and after 9 seasons, some felt cheated of an ending. Initially, MMORPGs are attractive because of the social factor - you play with your mates and it's fun when you do that. But once you move away from the socialisation aspects, you start to wonder where is the game heading. Anarchy Online supposedly promises a storyline, but it seems that they're struggling with that, and losing players along the way.
Are endings or closure important for MMORPG players? Does it at least give you something that you know you can look forward to? I remember vividly the endings I experienced at the closing of Beta testing for some online game where they literally brought armageddon upon the beta worlds. You knew you were going to die, but you were determined to go out with a bang! Or are MMORPG players so fickle minded that the minute the newest coolest one comes out (read Star Wars Galaxies), everyone will ditch their level 90 characters which they've worked so hard to bring up, and adorn blaster rifles instead?
I personally think MMORPGs ran out of ideas a very long time ago, and all they've been doing since is a rehash of a handful of ideas, re-arranged into a slightly different style each time. The genre needs a real injection of shazam (Shazam?) else it'll go stale really quickly. RTS has just about managed to survive by incorporating new ideas here and there (often borrowed from other genres, such as first person viewpoints in Battlezone or RPG elements in games like Warcraft 3) but the genre is still spawning far too many bland identical titles. The situation is much worse for MMORPGs, and people can't be expected to shell out to play the same old rubbish forever.
But it's early days. I don't think people would buy FPSs if developers suddenly decided to do away with the actual shooting or killing. There are just certain ideas at the core of every genre that although it may be beneficial in the long run to do away with, developers are too scared to remove. Why tamper with a winning formula? If MMORPGs were truly hitting a plateau, why would players constantly hop to the "next best thing". If every game is the same and nothing new is being done to improve the genre, why would people bother to buy the new releases. Or if players truly were so fickle, why do you still find so many playing UO, EQ, AC et al? Of course, people buy new games because they want a new experience, it's the same with any genre, why should players of mmorpgs be singled out? mmorpgs are progressing, as any other genre is. Perhaps not as rapidly as others, but they are in their uber-infancy. And due to their net-based only nature perhaps they experience more adversity than their offline "multiplayer when we choose it" brethren.
MMORPG players should be singled out because they are paying effective four to fivefolds the price of owning a game (easily) for the privilege of playing it. A new MMORPG (a hot title) will probably cost 30 pounds for the CD alone, and then 12 mths subscription (assuming you don't have a free mth) of about 10/12 pounds, you're chalking out 150 pounds for a game to play for a year. That's why MMORPGs are such cashcows, if successful. But you have to ask yourself why would players pay 150 pounds for a year's worth of gaming in a persistent world? Socialising? Lots of other forms of socialisation exists but don't forget either that the average hardcore MMORPG player will be playing it about 4 hours a day easily, which means his real life socialisation is often sacrificed (I speaketh from personal experience). What about another psychological trait found in gamers - obsessive compulsive complexes? You *have* to find all the hidden treasures in Tomb Raider/RTCW etc. You *have* to have the full set of armour and weapon in Diablo II. You have to level up your character. After all, it is the obsessive gamers that companies are after since they're the ones that will stay in the MMORPG the longest. Any UO player that started the game from release and is still playing now would have paid about 350 pounds by now for the privilege of keeping their character in a world which may or may not shut down eventually. The adversity with MMORPG is because of the *commitment* that players commit to - time, effort, and especially money - into the game.
The question as always with any genre is how is it progressing? The core of any FPS (or any other genre) has been always the same but then you get original games which cross boundaries (fps/rpg or fps/rts) which may or may not be successful. You also get new genre-specific games that are exciting and refreshing because of its cleverly scripted storyline(mohaa). The problem is that MMORPGs (admittedly at its infancy) is struggling with storylines and creativity. The outlays and costs involved in setting up any kind of MMORPG are huge, and not within the scope of most publishers. I'm surprised that work on Everquest 2 is well underway, as I fully undersand the reason UO2 was cancelled - they already had a profitable MMORPG that a lot of people wouldn't necessarily want to leave.
MMORPGs are difficult to both wind up (get going) and then wind down, and I imagine Everquest 2 will take on lots of Everquest players, effectively keeping the half-million or so fanbase that generate so much revenue. Not that the R really belongs in MMORPG anyway. They are more about committed, repetitive excercises than true roleplaying, discovery and all that other kind of stuff we get offline. One thing I'd REALLY like to see more of is MMORPGs that you can initially play offline - a way to train up your character and get a good deal of experience with the title without having to pay any phone bills or monthly charges. After all, all you'll miss out on is a bunch of other people who don't roleplay anyway and just want to kill you.
In fact, wait a minute, that's just an RPG like Diablo. So people just pay £10 a month to play Diablo-like games online with the extra appeal of 10 year old boys who want to kill them? Let 'em. I'd rather people like that were stuck indoors playing computer games 24/7 than getting involved in my life. There is one heck of a lot that could be done with MMORPGs to make them more conducive to roleplay, but number one on my list is the banishment of levels in their current form. I don't care how good you are, if fifty people blitz you at once in real life, you are going to die. No matter how hard you swing it, that sword is not going to slice through full-plate like it was butter. Yet as it stands, the only way to get into a position where you can play a valuable part is to either fight constantly, or be in a group with other people who are doing so. Even in games like Neocron, which push the idea of a virtual environment, there's this mad concept that unless you've killed a hundred billion gazillion rats, you're not qualified to deliver expensive packages.
There's plenty that could be done to push more social elements into the fore. Add things like chess games with movable pieces, force players to eat, and thus into communal areas. Encourage trading between cities rather than having everyone flogging kit at the same price. Put character elements behind the scenes a bit more - a particular character being created with a number of secrets that only emerge after a bit of play rather than a blank template. Play with perception - Og the Orc seeing a lump of metal and a snake, Brian the Dwarf seeing a nugget of gold and a venomous serpent and Sarah the Elf seeing a lump of precious metal and a rattlesnake. Instead of levels, push the traits concept. MMORPGs is a genre that have been running for years, but only their first few pages have been written. Lots of people want to do more, but they can't risk failing. Ultima Online is hideously complicated from a design point of view, and if you want to challenge it then you have to do from the point of launch. Everquest is the template, but because it's the only one around, nobody really knows what else people would risk. Moreover, these games are hard enough to write when you're just working to a template - never mind having to create something from scratch. This isn't an excuse for failure - making games is hard - but it is the reason that most people can't even approach the idea of giving it a try.
MMORPGs...
I reckon these things are (or, at least, could be) very powerful.
One thing I don't think a lot of people think about when it comes to computer games is their exact role and/or function. We just know that they're fun without really worrying why. I've played a lot of computer games and the odd console game in my time and the following is my my personal interpretation of my experiences:
"Games are either sports or stories".
What I mean by this is that some games we play for the competition, the challenge, such that we learn a rule set, familiarise with an environment and then make choices based on what we think will result in the desired outcome. This might sound like a rather strange sport but I think there is a lot of common ground. Imagine a game of snooker - practicing on your own allows you to try and master the game (single-player) and then you play against someone else to compare what you've learnt (multi-player). I think this applies to the obvious games like FPS's, simulations and beat-em-ups, and also to RTS's (strategy titles in general). However, I think this also applies to RPGs - I think that they are, in a way, a sport. From the outset, it would seem that they're about the story (with the Fallout and BG series confirming this) but there are those that you can play again and again (the infamous Diablo series) with the sport arising in the pursuit of the ultimate character.
I think it also parallels with the modification of sports cars, Fast and the Furious stylee, in that you spend time and effort in honing your character and then comparing it with others to see if you're the best. I think there is some adventure in the reaching of the high levels but for an RPG to be repetitive then the addiction has to be in the character improvement. I think the successful MMORPGs have been sport-orientated in that it's all been about getting that hard-as-a-brick-made-of-nails character and then handing it to something or someone that walks round giving it the gob. I think the level treadmill is a familiar term. However, on the flipside, we have the games that act as stories. Some RPGs are one-shot (sometimes 2, dear Baldurs Gate) with their attraction/addiction being the detailed plot. The other obvious format of story-games is the adventure game (Monkey Island series - me sheds a tear) and these are almost always one-shot.
I think that if you want your MMORPGs to be more of a story than a sport, then you have to make the whole online game revolve around a global plot of some sorts. To allow this plot to then be influenced by the actions of the players in the game. I think that rather than just code an online domain/arena, you would need to code a world.
Which brings me to Neocron.
Yeah, I've been looking into it a bit and reading the creator's vision for it. It's got a lot of good intention and the offline demo does imply great things. They're about to begin their grand plot but, wisely, they've decided that it'll be completely scripted in terms of the ending being the same regardless of which factions destroy each other. I'll confess - it looks like it could be good, but for such a game to attract people on a role-playing basis for the long term, then it's going to need a long-term plot (Eastenders-style). And for the role-playing to be believable, then everyone within the game will need to appreciate their place and play their role. 12 year-old kids will not do this.
I've always seen one-shot plot games as interactive movies/adventures. Every other player in the single-player games is an NPC as this allows the creator to completely impose his vision on the player. For an MMORPG that intends to be story-driven, the creator will need control of the world and the only way they could do this is by influence. As such, I suggest that they would have to employ people purely to play the game as key figures in the world that they've created and their job being to guide the game and its players in the direction that the creator desires. In other words, I think the creator needs to create characters that have influence in the world and then hire people to control them in a manner fitting with the creator's agenda - the creator needs their invisible hand.
So, to summarise, I reckon that for a plot-orientated MMORPG to be successful it would need continual plot control and world manipulation from the POV of the creator. I think this would also need, to some degree, understanding and cooperation from the players.
Kind of like confucianism.
If such a complete world was ever created, what a powerful thing it would be, an absorbing world that exists purely on the audio and visual inputs - if it took any more of the senses then I think powerful would read as dangerous.
Thanks for reading (and sorry to drag on),
Flux.
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