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Wandering v. Goal Driven MMORPGs
Fizzle
Player of GamesRegistered User regular
Player of GamesRegistered User regular
I have returned to my first MMORPG love, Ultima Online. Some rather generous benefactors have been kind enough to host a free server, called UODivinity, based upon the Old Skool rules I know and adore. Well, my somewhat diminished return UO started the inevitable soul searching about where games were, where they are, and where they're heading.
As I gallavanted aimlessly throughout the hinterlands surrounding Minoc, the major difference between UO and all of the other MMOs I've played (WoW, DAOC, etc.) became very clear: purpose.
Wandering MMOs
Old Skool Ultima Online, which is still my favorite MMORPG, is utterly bereft of game instilled purpose. The game is what it is, and it is entirely up to you to define your existence and how you will interact with the rules and frameworks erected before you. Players opt to pursue nontradtional pursuits such tailors, blacksmiths, rangers, or sheepherders. Of course more traditional avenues are also available, such as swordsmen or mages. Each of these roles are entirely up to the player to select, and he may elect to change them at any time by developing some skills allowing others to decay.
The point behind this overview is to note the breadth and depth in universe in UO. There are more opportunities and more options in UO than in any other game, and players are left to their own devices to determine how to make these options work for them. In essence, players create their own goals and their own content, and wander around the game world seeking to fulfill these personal objectives. UO must be that broad and deep because players are not directed into any path. Since the game requires players to be creative in their experience, it must give players the tools to make the game interesting. Thus UO content is varied and at times seemingly random in its existence (candles, houses, barrel slates, and so forth).
Goal MMORPGs
These MMORPGs center on game identified goals, generally represented by quests. The game crafts an often superficial storyline to pieces these quests haphazardly together, and the adventurers mow their way through them in an effort to gain unique prizes or quick experience. Since the purpose of the game is to achieve these preset goals, the content, rules, and framework of the game are developed around enhancing the player's ability to achieve this objective.
Let's take World of Warcraft, which is far and away best orchestrated game employing this model. WoW employs a intricate web of quests that rewards the player with quick experience and, most importantly, the chance to obtain powerful weapons beyond those acquired in the game proper. Players who fail to acquire these weapons are uniformly at a disadvantage, which creates an incredible incentive to participate in these events.
This focus is reinforced by the secondary skills players may undertake, such alchemy, mining, or enchanting. All of these skills produce benefits that directly benefit the acquisition of game identified goals. For instance, alchemy produces health potions, which are critical to some dungeon crawls. Mining produces ore which is then employed in blacksmithy which ultimately turns into weapons. I am hard pressed to think of any purely frivolous skills/items in WoW outside of the occasional event related cookies.
As a result of the goal-centricity in the game, players are forced down a single track, that they play over and over again, albeit through different professions. The game is only interesting as long as there a constant influx of additional goal related content, but it is always a linear path. Take the expansions, which add adventure onto the end of a player's life, rather than enriching the player's journey along the way.
Combining Them
Now, I've allowed my biases to creep into my presentation, which is unfair to the goal driven MMORPGs. Frankly, WoW is an amazing game. The world is beautiful, the underlying story intriguing, and the writing excellent. But despite all of these advantages, I could never play the game for more than 3 weeks without quitting for a few months. The confined system left me feeling like I was working a second job that I lost money on. WoW doesn't appeal to my particular brand of playing, but it absolutely appeals to a broader public that craves constant reward and identifiable objectives.
UO was an incredible game, but it ultimately went the way of the dinosaurs because, for all of its creativity, it never managed to take it to the next level. Games with better graphics and fresh outlooks on the genre quickly grabbed the lion's share of the subscriber base, causing UO to wither.
But something is missing from these new games, just as something was missing from UO. Balance. There must be greater breadth in gameplay in WoW, but there must also be purpose and aesthetic beauty in UO. Where's the balance? I'm not quite sure, but I'm sure there will be a post on it sooner or later.
[Cross Posted from Blogs]
As I gallavanted aimlessly throughout the hinterlands surrounding Minoc, the major difference between UO and all of the other MMOs I've played (WoW, DAOC, etc.) became very clear: purpose.
Wandering MMOs
Old Skool Ultima Online, which is still my favorite MMORPG, is utterly bereft of game instilled purpose. The game is what it is, and it is entirely up to you to define your existence and how you will interact with the rules and frameworks erected before you. Players opt to pursue nontradtional pursuits such tailors, blacksmiths, rangers, or sheepherders. Of course more traditional avenues are also available, such as swordsmen or mages. Each of these roles are entirely up to the player to select, and he may elect to change them at any time by developing some skills allowing others to decay.
The point behind this overview is to note the breadth and depth in universe in UO. There are more opportunities and more options in UO than in any other game, and players are left to their own devices to determine how to make these options work for them. In essence, players create their own goals and their own content, and wander around the game world seeking to fulfill these personal objectives. UO must be that broad and deep because players are not directed into any path. Since the game requires players to be creative in their experience, it must give players the tools to make the game interesting. Thus UO content is varied and at times seemingly random in its existence (candles, houses, barrel slates, and so forth).
Goal MMORPGs
These MMORPGs center on game identified goals, generally represented by quests. The game crafts an often superficial storyline to pieces these quests haphazardly together, and the adventurers mow their way through them in an effort to gain unique prizes or quick experience. Since the purpose of the game is to achieve these preset goals, the content, rules, and framework of the game are developed around enhancing the player's ability to achieve this objective.
Let's take World of Warcraft, which is far and away best orchestrated game employing this model. WoW employs a intricate web of quests that rewards the player with quick experience and, most importantly, the chance to obtain powerful weapons beyond those acquired in the game proper. Players who fail to acquire these weapons are uniformly at a disadvantage, which creates an incredible incentive to participate in these events.
This focus is reinforced by the secondary skills players may undertake, such alchemy, mining, or enchanting. All of these skills produce benefits that directly benefit the acquisition of game identified goals. For instance, alchemy produces health potions, which are critical to some dungeon crawls. Mining produces ore which is then employed in blacksmithy which ultimately turns into weapons. I am hard pressed to think of any purely frivolous skills/items in WoW outside of the occasional event related cookies.
As a result of the goal-centricity in the game, players are forced down a single track, that they play over and over again, albeit through different professions. The game is only interesting as long as there a constant influx of additional goal related content, but it is always a linear path. Take the expansions, which add adventure onto the end of a player's life, rather than enriching the player's journey along the way.
Combining Them
Now, I've allowed my biases to creep into my presentation, which is unfair to the goal driven MMORPGs. Frankly, WoW is an amazing game. The world is beautiful, the underlying story intriguing, and the writing excellent. But despite all of these advantages, I could never play the game for more than 3 weeks without quitting for a few months. The confined system left me feeling like I was working a second job that I lost money on. WoW doesn't appeal to my particular brand of playing, but it absolutely appeals to a broader public that craves constant reward and identifiable objectives.
UO was an incredible game, but it ultimately went the way of the dinosaurs because, for all of its creativity, it never managed to take it to the next level. Games with better graphics and fresh outlooks on the genre quickly grabbed the lion's share of the subscriber base, causing UO to wither.
But something is missing from these new games, just as something was missing from UO. Balance. There must be greater breadth in gameplay in WoW, but there must also be purpose and aesthetic beauty in UO. Where's the balance? I'm not quite sure, but I'm sure there will be a post on it sooner or later.
[Cross Posted from Blogs]
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WoW doesn't really have a storyline or a purpose beyond getting better gear, at least not that I have seen. There have been events that occured, but they haven't really changed anything at all in the day to day game.
Arasaki, you've succinctly nailed the issue I am trying to raise regarding Wow: it is entirely linear in purpose. There is a tremendous amount they could do with this intellectual property if they would expand laterally (add in non-item centric purpose to the game) rather than vertically (adding more levels through expansions). The underlying story in the game is just ripe for a dedicated team of writers to really make amazing events and material come to life. The problem is that the game has become a victim of its own success. With the millions of players they now have, any horizontal change to the game is an enormous undertaking that is just impossible to render adequately without offending portions of the player base.
It's a shame, because the lore behind warcraft is quite possibly the richest untapped resource any game has out there right now.
Thing is, for a lot of players, UO's scope is... dull. What is this non-item centric purpose you talk about? Why is crafting a sword in WoW somehow a symptom of a larger issue, whereas doing the exact same thing in UO isn't? You wrote about players finding their own goals, but didn't actually list any. What goals are there that can't be achieved in a quest-oriented MMO on a PVP server?
You classify WoW as a goal driven game, but it has no story. My point was that without a story advancement, there isn't really a clear goal. Sure, you can aim to get better gear (as the majority of the playerbase does) but that is up to the player, rather than being forced on you by the game. Sure you'll suck in PvP somewhat, but the game is made by the players. If you want to wander around killing things at random, you can do that in WoW.
I don't know if this makes much sense, I was up until 5am raiding and I'm stupidly tired.
Unless you meant good MMO's, in which case none quite like you describe. Eve Online is pretty player driven though.
I haven't played it since the beta, so I don't know how it is now. Then, it was bad because it was a massive steaming pile of shit.
It could have improved, I did actually like the basic ideas behind some of it. It just felt like a low quality CoH game.
I believe Asheron's Call had a world event where an entire town was razed and left a smoldering crater. The players who "saved" to that town logged back in to find an unpleasant feeling in their pant region.
Logged out at ground level, logged in to taking fall damage?
Asheron's Call has on more then one occasion held GM triggered events that when the players finished the event the storyline would advance.
edit: Things like "Look at this new dungeon, it has a big nasty thing in it, please go in here and get this for me." And then the entire server would go into a non-instanced dungeon and race to be the first to collect the item.
But you could wander around all day doing whatever you wanted or nothing at all, or choose to take part in the storyline quests with other people.
It felt like a living world that you were a small part of.
This, lime'd SO hard for truth. I can't understand it.
WoW has the potential to pull you in through gameplay already, but the game is without a heart. I can't get wrapped up in the world of Azeroth the way I did with Dereth in AC.
Wandering MMOs are basically devoid of this type of linear pursuit because no particular object or item is valuable to the point where its acquisition is mandatory. So, take old school UO. The items are almost completely disposable. And if you happened to acquire a particularly powerful magic weapon, you lost it if you died. This resulted in items being completely devalued, removing it as a primary purpose for playing in the game. As a result, people were forced to determine what they wanted from the game, because the game refused to push them in any particular direction. Some sought to have the most impressively furnished house, others the most notorious rap sheet, and still others sought to acquire reknown for their prowess in inumerable crafts (cooking, tailoring, sheepherding, etc.)
Here's the thing, I love WoW's world. It is aesthetically stunning and I enjoyed interacting in the environment. Sadly, I couldn't travel to 7/8ths of the world early on because of my low level. Indeed, exploration of new areas was confined to when I needed to travel there to grind. There was little by way of superflous points of interest and the game largely became a grind fest for me. Some people derive satisfaction from this type of game (a good chunk of my friends), but I couldn't handle it. I made it to level 50 in 3-4 weeks and then quit, never to return.
This is day I regret that WoW didn't have more diversity to offer in terms of play styles. Sadly, since loot was the be all end of all of the game, I saw myself participating in rediculous repeated run throughs of the same dungeon in order to get a weapon that dropped 5% of the time. It was just a shame, but I absolutely love the lore in that game.
Ugh.
"But it was there! I had to do something I hated, because it's there, and now I hate the game for completely and utterly forcing me to do something that I did entirely of my own free will!"
Yeah, GW really did some amazing stuff there.
Garthor, I mostly agree, though I think it's fair to say that WoW really only caters to the hyper-casual who just want a pretty chatroom, or those interested in instance-based loot gathering.
Nothing about the game means you should play it, though, if you don't like either of those things.
I thought the introduction of heros in WCIII combined with balancing for diametricly different races deserved a nod.
The first warcraft game wasn't very innovative at all.
Diablo was moreso. Way moreso. It created Battle.net.
But yeah, Warcraft's Lore is terrible, and the gameplay is a rehash. However, It has pretty graphics, a large amount of content and pvp combat that is really fun, if completely unsupported.
That is, frankly, BS in the context of WoW. It is not the fact that there is a possibility of getting gear in wow that annoys people, it is that it is the objective around which EVERYTHING in the game revolves. It is truly world of lootcraft.
Last time I played WoW I resorted to cornering the auctionhouse's markets out of boredom.
Warcraft was innovative for its time, for sure. It came out when RTSes were just being made. Diablo was a pretty standard hack 'n' slash, and its online component was innovative, but I don't really think the rest was. I love Blizzard, it's a fantastic company, they just aren't very innovative.
Create a character, level character through quests. Rinse, repeat. There isn't anywhere to go horizontally in the game, only vertically. I really had no interest in repeating the same grinding for the sole purpose of experiencing the nominally different play experiences of playing different types of characters. I accept my view might be in the minority given the 10 million people who are playing.
My issue is finding a way to balance these linear games with the chaos of wandering mmos.
The simplification in wow is what makes it suck. All of those things aren't fun and are completely pointless. Instances are all WoW is.
There aren't even guildhalls as of when I quit. They even had those in Guildwars, one of the worst pseudo-mmo's I've played.
Just out of curiosity, what were the H&S games before Diablo? I always had the impression that they took the core gameplay from roguelikes and made it real-time and accesible and added multiplayer. That seems pretty innovative to me but it's totally possible I'm just in the dark about some games that did that earlier.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Honestly I don't see how having a guild house adds a whole new level of gameplay. It's just somewhere else to hang out while you /afk.
It would certainly add something to the now deceased RP community. But, obviously, anything that isn't more raid dungeons that anyone who was actually playing the game before the expansion got sick of after Naxx is not even considered. You do know who is in charge of WoW's game design, after all?
Hey, maybe more customization for character's faces and hairstyles after 3 years? No, lol, moar instances.
Lazy game design for lazy players. Tons of waste potential. The "world" of warcraft is the exact same thing it was back when it came out, just with more instances to grind loot in.
It's pretty boring at times, but it's still fun. Sort of. Guild housing would be cool, but it wouldn't really add anything to the game itself.
I have a feeling that no matter how many questions you ask him, he is not going to admit that what he really misses is the joy of ganking newbs as they try the game out.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
I never played UO. I also played WoW on a PvE server.
No that's about right. It's a real-time graphical roguelike. Right down to "the boss is always on level X!" and "randomly generated dungeon levels and gear!", "a safe town level with set shopkeepers with random inventories!" and to-hit and to-damage on weapons. Look at how much of WoW depends on what they started with Diablo and expanded upon in D2: per-level stat systems, spell ranks rather than new versions of old ones, randomly-generated equipment and drops, random rare/champion/boss spawns, etc.
It doesn't take a lot of imagination for someone to come up with the idea (the resources required, especially in what, 1995? were far beyond your average basement coder's ability though) of Diablo. What Blizzard did was add their now-trademark level of sheen to the game, using really high-tech (for the time) sprites and so on. That, and they built an interesting backstory that eventually had fuck-all to do with how people played the game (you played Blizzard games for the numbers, not for the plot, or you get bored of them after two, maybe three playthroughs. Play Baldur's Gate if you want plot). Much like Roguelikes, the reason you're in the dungeon is irrelevant. What matters is the loots, and how far you can get.
Freeware games like Angband do the same thing with far greater complexity and depth and replayability within their stat systems. Blizzard simplified it, made it easier for the mainstream market to play (ever tried to get a casual gamer into roguelikes? it doesn't fucking work), and had a hit. They did the same thing for the RTS genre, which admittedly wasn't all that complex to begin with in the days of Warcraft (AoE, C&C) but they sure kept it that way, and they did the same with MMOs with WoW.
Accessible games sell. Really fucking well. Blizzard has built their entire company on making games that are easy to pick up. The difference between an advanced WC3 player and a beginner is just how many times he can click per second, nothing more. The difference between an endgame WoW raider and a casual player is how much math he likes to do. There's no variation in strategy in either case, there are between one and three viable endgame builds for each class in WoW, and they're all built the same (exactly like Diablo 2, right down to a per-level talent/skill system with lots of behind-the-scenes math). There are three or four strategies for each race in WC3, and all that matters is picking the right one to counter your enemies and work with your allies (rock paper scissors) and clicking faster than them.
Anyone can be an endgame player in a Blizzard game. They just need some Excel spreadsheets and, in some cases, a fast mouse finger. That's the appeal, that the difference between you in your greens at 70 and that guy in his awesome-looking purples is how much math he's done and how many nights a week he raids. You, too, can [have other people] do the math, spend Sundays raiding rather than fishing in STV, and get your purples. Levels 1-58 are just meant to get you into the new content they've built, and soon 59-69 will just be a race to get to Northrend. And after that, they'll raise the level cap, and make another ten levels of the game irrelevant.
This is the problem with making the very last level of the game the "goal": if you make it too tough to reach that goalk, people won't play. If you make it too easy, then everyone's there and nobody feels special, and you have to keep raising that bar so that people feel like there's another goal in sight. I'm fairly certain that Blizzard will never release another zone intended for levels 1-60 to level up and quest in. Unlike, say, EQ1 and EQ2 which released expansion after expansion designed at broadening the climb to the top, rather than narrowing and lengthening it.
This is a long, long way of saying that focusing too much on the "goal" of the game is a great way to either make content that people have paid for in the past useless, or else risk boring them by not giving them new goals every eight to sixteen months. Blizzard has designed around that by clearly separating the game into two parts, PvP and PvE, which is probably going to keep WoW going a lot longer than it really ought to.
That, and it reached a critical point of popularity. They could never release new content again and they'll be raking in money for another decade.
Damn you and your facts!
I never really raided in WoW but my impression is that you could really skip the math since the "correct" strategy would be worked out by others. Sometimes I found having a feel for the math was useful for weeding out bullshit arguments though.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)