Sirlin Takes a Crack at WoW on Gamasutra

[Joe]

David Sirlin's "World of Warcraft Teaches the Wrong Things" was passed to us on the editorial team by an intrepid reader who thought it merited a look, and wow, was he ever right. The article talks about how WoW - and really most MMOGs - teach bad morals about how advancement works and why it's more detrimental to society than games like GTA, whose themes are more wholesome.

Yeah, give it a read.

Sirlin's a producer at Backbone Entertainment, but rather than talking about his work there, he focuses on contrasting WoW against Street Fighter tournements, which he says do a far better job at making learning life skills fun.

His key gripes with WoW are:
Investing a lot of time in something is worth more than actual skill.
Time > skill is so fundamentally bad, that I'm still going to go on about it even though I started a new number.
Group > Solo.
Group > Solo.
Guilds.
The Terms of Service.

Personally, I think he has a lot of good points, and he touches upon a lot of the flaws present in most MMOGs, not just WoW. Don't get me wrong, I love me some massive multiplayer, and I don't plan on stopping, but it's always interesting to read another take on the genre, especially since there are fundamental issues no one's bothered to tackle, just because those very issues are what make so much money.

Case in point, the bad group mentality Sirlin brings up is what keeps so many people playing. You're not worth creating content for until you join a guild; pretty much everything since EQ has supported the sentiment by gearing the majority of high level content toward guilds. And if the devs, as gods of their little universe, look down on you, it's only a matter of time before their worshippers follow suit. It's so bad, high level players who aren't in a guild might as well be carrying a scarlet letter. Why doesn't Doctorgonzo have tags at level 55? He must be a jackass.

So, let's say you break down and join a guild, both to get rid of the stigma and to actually experience that oh-so-worthwhile end game. Now, you're accepted. You have friends who grind instances and raid with you. How could you ever leave the game now? You'd be leaving your friends. You'd go back to being a nobody in an entirely new game, forced into being beneath the gaze of the gods once again. So you stay and keep forking over your monthly fee.

It's not a good mindset to see brewing around a world, but it's not new.

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Gambeson

I've reached 60 twice and immediately quit playing both times. I play at odd hours for short periods of time. The end game has nothing to offer me.

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Phoenix

Sirlin is an annoying twit who considers 2D fighters the crowning achievment of mankind, and inevitably, everything he compares to it falls short. He has a few good points every now and then, but good lord, sifting through his masturbatory prose of what he likes most and how it kicks massive amount of ass gets tiring. Very quickly.

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Pat M.

Well, maybe that's because 2D fighters ARE the crowning achievement of mankind.

For the record, it's been my understanding that he's been playing all kinds of stuff. He worked on Death Jr. for PSP, he's been playing WoW for a good long while, and I can assure you that his video game collection encompasses more than just 2D fighters. But he does love him some Street Fighter.

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Apreche
http://www.apreche.net
Wow, I finally found someone with a new spin on the same stuff I've been saying for years. I'm 100% with him when it comes to the time vs. skill and the TOS enforcement. Maybe we should hook up and play some European board games. They are the pinnacle of skill meaning more than time or luck in direct competition between people. As for TOS, imagine if police came and took your Super Mario Bros. cartridge away for going to the minus world.

When it comes to group vs. solo I can somewhat agree, but not completely. Unlike the author, I'm somewhat of an extrovert. If I'm playing an MMO it is decidedly more fun to play it with people than play it alone. That's kind of the point. If I want to play alone I can play Final Fantasy 6. In the MUD days people had more fun grouping, but the system encouraged going solo. Modern games recognize this problem of the past and have changed the rules to do the exact opposite.

What they really need to do is flatten it out. Have advantages and disadvantages for both. Grouping makes it easier to kill really dangerous stuff and go new places, but you have to share the wealth. Solo play makes it harder to win, but you get all the rewards to yourself. I don't even like the idea that you need X people to do certain tasks. What if I'm just so great I can do it on my own? if I'm so good at Counter-Strike I can take on a team of 10 guys, then so be it.

WoW is just the ultimate polish of the existing MMORPG design. It's the same grinding nonsense that Everquest and all the other games have. They just made each aspect of the game a little bit shinier to become the genre king. I'm still never going to play these sorts of games. I got it all out of my system back in the MUD days. Call me when someone makes an MMOG that is based on skill and teaches something good.

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Rossignol
http://rossignol.cream.org
"WoW is just the ultimate polish of the existing MMORPG design."

It's the ultimate polish of *a single* MMORPG design. Eve, Guild Wars and Second Life show it can be done very differently.

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Pat M.

"It's the ultimate polish of *a single* MMORPG design. ...Second Life... show it can be done very differently."

I think we need to see if we can collectively go a week without mentioning, *ahem*...that particular title.

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Andy
http://www.andrewtjs.com
I'm an introvert, but I still questioned Sirlin's view on going solo. Anyway, he's right about everything else.

And about Second Life..... I've played it. I don't get it. Is there something I'm missing?

 

[Joe]

I've been trying to dabble, Andy. All I can take from it is a surreal feeling that I'm doing something incredibly wrong and need to log out before I get caught.

It's very Lewis Caroll/Willy Wonka. I'm still trying to narrow down how to make a mark.

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Patrick Koeppen

Sirlin missed the point entirely in my opinion. Comparing an RPG with Fighting game is like comparing apples and oranges. Sure they are both fruits, but that's basicly all they have in common.

Now World of Warcraft is a Role-Playing Game. Now Role playing games naturally spawned from the table top version we grew up with and skill for the most part was not really inherent to the system. The rules specificly took out the skill in actually controling the character and moved it to understanding the rules that governed the system. Street fighter on the other hand is pure skill. Practice may help, but like professional sports at a certain point all the practice in the world is not going to help you.

Characters are also specificly different, be it table top, single player computer games like Baldur's Gate or Final Fantasy or an MMORPG then a fighting game such as Street Fighter or Soul Calibur. RPGs are specificly designed that your character progresses. Following the story and experiencing that your character is improving over time. RPGs without improvement to the character is more like a plateform game like Super Mario World. Fighting games dont really have any progression. Street fighter had none at all and Soul Calibur only really has one inorder to allow for a storyline that is mostly secondary, where the story is usually the most important aspect of an RPG.

Hence, this is where the entire article loses its argument. Time is at the core of an RPGs fundamental design while skill is the fundamental design behind a fighting game. Because of this the time vs skill argument is mute since he is playing an RPG. A character with 100 days played should be more experienced then a character with only 10 days, and thus in the rpg ruling logic the 100 days character is "better".

Now, he does have a valid complain in terms of PVP, but analysis of the problem was wrong. Mainly PVP in an RPG enviroment rarely works effectively without forcing normalization on the players, which defeats the purpose behind the RPG in the first place. The Honor system in WoW is flawed. Honor Rank is only really a trophy of time invested in the system, yet on the flipside consider would a true ladder system work either? Remember the PVE component throws any type of balance out of the window also. A player in Full Blackwing Lair PVP Gear is still going to wipe the floor against a new player that just reached 60. Skill may factor in a little but ultimately gear wins over skill. Thus, you need to eliminate gear because it is at the heart the fundamental issue with the system and we are back again with the issue of normalization for PVP would kill the RPG style of the system.

The rest of his complains are moronic in that he is playing a Massive Multiplayer Online Game. RPGs have always stressed group play. You couldnt really play Dungeons and Dragons alone in the basement, thus why should the computer game version be different? Even the fantasy novel genre usually always stressed the group defeating evil and not the single person. Fellowship of the Ring anyone?

Guilds are a natural extension of group play, and it is human nature to be competitive. Thus, if you beat the New Mega Boss first on your server, well rubbing the nose in every other guild on the server is only natural. What is different then beating your friend in a fighting game and then gloating over it to him?

Lastly, he complains about the Terms of Service argeement and how Blizzard is basicly babysitting its customers. And he starts spouting off about Raph Koster's idea of FUN being destroyed. Are we talking about the same Raph Koster here? The one that a couple of years ago at a gaming conference gave a speech where one of the big points he made was that the "End-user was the Enemy" and any power be it small given to him would come back to bite the developer in the rear end? Yeah.

World of Warcraft is entertainment. Sure it may teach something. But I doubt we will see WoW 101 on any curriculum in the near future. The morals this game teachs is derived from basic RPG tradition. And since most of the children of the 80s turned out alright from playing DnD in their basement, I think this generation of children will turn out fine as well.

Thus, this article is an utter waste. He doesnt understand the genre of RPGs at all and should go back to designing/playing fighting games, and leave the MMORPGs to some people who are actually experience like Blizzard because with 5 million subscribers they must be doing something right.

Patrick Koeppen

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Raph
http://www.raphkoster.com
Time is at the core of an RPGs fundamental design

Dude, I can only presume you've been weaned on CRPGs, but time is most certainly NOT at the core of RPG design. You might notice the "RP" that gave the genre its name... You state, "RPGs are specificly designed that your character progresses." No, not in all of them. In fact, in many of the modern ones, it's avoided.

Even the fantasy novel genre usually always stressed the group defeating evil and not the single person. Fellowship of the Ring anyone?

Even D&D was inspired to a huge degree by Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser books, which are not in the mold of the Tolkien books at all. (You can check the list of sources in the back of your 1st ed. AD&D books if you don't believe me). Much classic fantasy is not in this mold.

Are we talking about the same Raph Koster here? The one that a couple of years ago at a gaming conference gave a speech where one of the big points he made was that the "End-user was the Enemy" and any power be it small given to him would come back to bite the developer in the rear end?

Clearly we're not, since I have never said any such thing, and in fact have advocated for greater power to be given to players for MANY years now. You might want to actually read some of the things I have written before making an assertion like that.

The morals this game teachs is derived from basic RPG tradition. And since most of the children of the 80s turned out alright from playing DnD in their basement, I think this generation of children will turn out fine as well.

The classic tabletop RPG taught imagination, storytelling, and roleplay, which are not really lessons ANY CRPG teaches particularly well.

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Pat M.

"Hence, this is where the entire article loses its argument. Time is at the core of an RPGs fundamental design while skill is the fundamental design behind a fighting game. Because of this the time vs skill argument is mute since he is playing an RPG. A character with 100 days played should be more experienced then a character with only 10 days, and thus in the rpg ruling logic the 100 days character is "better"."

Pretty much everything you've said in the last three paragraphs or so is a clear naturalistic fallacy - just because RPGs ARE this way, doesn't mean that they necessarily SHOULD BE this way. This is pretty much what Sirlin's entire thesis is - WoW SHOULD NOT be this way, because it ends up rewarding behavior that isn't necessarily all that constructive.

"The rest of his complains are moronic in that he is playing a Massive Multiplayer Online Game. RPGs have always stressed group play. You couldnt really play Dungeons and Dragons alone in the basement, thus why should the computer game version be different? Even the fantasy novel genre usually always stressed the group defeating evil and not the single person. Fellowship of the Ring anyone?"

Again - the is-ought fallacy. Just because MMOs have been designed like this doesn't mean they ought to be. I think Sirlin presents a compelling case for why de-emphasizing 40+ groups as a REQUIREMENT for high level play is a good idea. Not that you need to get rid of it, necessarily.

"Lastly, he complains about the Terms of Service argeement and how Blizzard is basicly babysitting its customers. And he starts spouting off about Raph Koster's idea of FUN being destroyed. Are we talking about the same Raph Koster here? The one that a couple of years ago at a gaming conference gave a speech where one of the big points he made was that the "End-user was the Enemy" and any power be it small given to him would come back to bite the developer in the rear end? Yeah."

I don't even know what you're talking about here. I see no link between:
1) Sirlin's TOS argument
2) Raph Koster's definition of fun
3) Raph Koster's game design philosophy

and your presumed conclusion:

4) OMG YUO R TEH SUX

"World of Warcraft is entertainment. Sure it may teach something. But I doubt we will see WoW 101 on any curriculum in the near future. The morals this game teachs is derived from basic RPG tradition. And since most of the children of the 80s turned out alright from playing DnD in their basement, I think this generation of children will turn out fine as well."

Playing D&D in your basement teaches you plenty of things about story narrative and game design. WoW teaches you how to feel productive clicking the same damn button over and over and over.

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Mory Buckman
http://i-m-not.blogspot.com
I don't understand what the problem is. If World of Warcraft's designers decided to make a world which enforces certain rules that go against the real world, they have that right. You know, free speech and all? I don't understand why everyone wants online games to represent the real world as much as possible; they can be much more interesting and fun if they find their own identities.

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Slartibartfast

Unfortunately gamasutra is blocked for me at the moment (posting from work), but I think I have a sense of the article from the summary and comments. The aspects of WoW that Sirlin brings up are things that bother me about a lot of RPGs in general, and is also the reason I got out of Magic: The Gathering. My friends have tried repeatedly to get me to play WoW, and I staunchly refuse, because it so obviously is a time-based investment, just as how M:TG is based on money. In both games skill plays a very small role, while being successful at the game means having large amounts of an out-of-game resource (time or money). From the people I've talked to who play WoW, the first thing they'll say is that it's an addiction, not that it's a fun game.

I'll be sure to read the article tonight.

 

[Landslide]

When you were a little kid and your parents put you into a sandbox, the first thing you did was dig.

This is how Blizzard has "failed" (I'll get to explaining that shortly). Instead of handing the player a shovel when s(he) joins the game, a neverending list of objectives is provided instead. With ninety-five percent of the game content designed around that list, a player would have to be pretty dedicated to avoid those objectives. So instead of going out to play, the player goes out to accomplish. They are forced to.

That's why I quit. I spent 40 levels with my Journal full of tasks to complete. Every one I finished spawned two more to take its place. I can't express how uninterested I was killing 40 of this creature, and 30 of that. I did it anyway (And I still do in other games), but it's out of necessity, not desire. How many people exclaim, "Woohoo! Another quest!"

Remember recess in elementary school? You were sent out into the schoolyard.

That's it.

You were sent out to a large area, coated in grass and pavement and given twenty minutes to have fun. There were the standards of course - jungle gym, the hopscotch lines, basketball hoops and the pickup baseball games, but there were also the hundreds of things you made up on the fly to entertain yourself for indeterminate periods of time. That's what these games are severely lacking. That's why EVE and Second Life keep getting mentioned. I played EVE for a year. Why? Because I wasn't mandated to play the game as the designers saw fit. It was there and I partook of it regularly, but I was able to deviate and experience fun created all on my own (or through my Corp). I learned, created, enjoyed myself and had fun with others, using nothing more than the mechanics provided by CCP. They gave me the schoolyard, and I was allowed to do what I wanted with it.

Now imagine your children on the schoolyard today. However, instead of the same freedoms we enjoyed as kids, there is a list of games they're allowed to play and everything not on that list is forbidden. If you don't want to play those games, you're free to skip recess. There's nothing else to do, so they play the games you're told to play.

This is the point. This is why this whole argument has been going on for years. Sandbox vs. Guided Content. One is built on the ideal that an average player enjoys the opportunity to take a richly populated/detailed/crafted world and make it their own. Which is proven (UO, EVE, SL, etc.). Respectively, the other is built on the ideal that if there's always something to do, something to achieve and convince the player continue to play. This is proven also (EQs, WoW, Camelot). (It's not an accident that one set of these is critically acclaimed and financially good, and the other is often critically devalued, but finacially superb).

The reason I say that Blizzard "Failed" is because they are now in a position of leadership. Lame, but true: "With great power, comes great responsibility." (Cheese, I know). They have four responsibilities that must be balanced.
1) Investors (Covered)
2) Employees (Covered)
3) Players (Debatable according to Sirlin)
4) Gaming (Shirked)

Gaming has not been advanced one iota by Blizzard. They have a proven track record of taking something that exists, and making it absolutely excellent. That is all. And that's my real problem with WoW. Since EQ, I have seen the same game being played. Different textures, new features, more, more, more, but four wheels and seats is still a car. No innovation.

And really - there's no reason to innovate, is there? With five million subscribers, it's easy to ignore the temptation to do something new and exciting.

So onward! LFG! Selling [my soul] for [periodic endorphine hit], plz send tell.

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Patrick Koeppen

What a nice discussion. Let me rephrase in order to get my point across better.

The bases of Sirlin article is that Street Fighter teaches better then WoW. He feels that skill is the most important aspect of a game to make it fair. And on this point, I believe his article is flawed. Because at a certain point skill is something that cannot be learned anymore. I could practice 16 hours daily for years and I still would not be Micheal Jordan. The level of play that Sirlin has participate in shows that he has a certain amount of born with ability. Hand-Eye Coordination and Neutral response time isnt exactly something that can be improved upon once a limit has been reached. To me that isnt exactly fair. True to life, but not fair.

Now RPGs on the other hand are a lot fairer in game play. The game moved away from totally controlling the character via quick reflexes but rather to understanding and studying the system. Naturally, people learn faster then other, but if the game is designed correctly then at a certain point you have master the rules, you cannot really better yourself. The fairness evolves in the fact that once another person learns the rules, you are both on equal footing and neither of you can are better then other in the confines of the rules.

Now Computer RPGs took a lot out of learning the rules way from the user, yet there is still a certain amount of studying involved even WoW. The Min/Maxers are usually frowned upon players yet they study the system to get the maximum efficiency out of their character. Players make sure to study the formulas in order to maximize their game play.

Thus there is a certain amount of skill in both CRPG as there is in fighting games, but because the rules are more define in CRPGs, I see it as fairer.

The time arguement is also ludicrous to me. Why? In order to get to the amount of skill level necessary where born talent becomes important, one needs to practice a fighting game for hours. Moves need to be studied, combos learned. Tactics come later. I dont see how this is different then sspending hours playing WoW. WoW over the hours you learn how and when to use your abilities in just the same manor as Street fighter. Neither time is exactly well spend, but a computer game is meant as entertainment and not really a teaching tool. In the long run, both are equally bad.

Now, his points 3 and 4 is something I dont understand. Group play in my opinion is an important life lesson to learn. Involving Albert Einstein's name to complain about 40 people working together toward a goal is absurd, considering that every major scientific achievement in the last 50 years was down so by a group and not a lone patent clerk. The days of great solo achievements is over. Research groups now find the solutions. Even in the computer industry you see it. Computer games now require ever growing groups and budgets to be successful, and the days of the single person designing a game in his basement are largely over. Thus, if we are speaking in terms of learning life lessons from a game then this should be the most important one. Now, that isnt to say that he is wrong about WoW not having enough solo content at the highest level, but I believe that Blizzard knows this, but fixing it isnt exactly something they can do overnight.

Which brings me to my last major point. Now Raph sorry I misquoted you. I'll get it right this time. In your 2000 GDC presentation, one of you points was that "The client is in the hands of the enemy." You then go into specifics about packet sniffers and hacking. Even if you didnt safe guard against everything like you described, not all users will still take advantage of hacking your ssystem. So ultimaltely, are guarding against the malcontent that could ruin the fun of everyone else. This is where I dont see complaints against a ToS working. Programming for a complex game such as a mmog with continually changing content means that content does get pushed out the door a little quicker then it should. Testing isnt as complete because the testing of the game is a continual process and while in a perfect world nothing would slip through, but this world is far from perfect.

The problem is giving the player base what they want but making sure the malcontents dont take advantage of something that wasnt thought of. No one is perfect and sometimes even the system itself would not allow the change without major coding that at the time you didnt have time for. Sirlin complains about how people traded Battleground wins without ever fighting and got punished for it and they shouldnt have because they were "exploring a loophole in the system". I dunno but to me that just teaches the wrong thing. He is basicly saying that it is okay to murder someone if there arent rules against it. Or better yet, use unethical finanicial practices in order to inflate your earnings a la Enron. Players should know that it is immoral to trade Battleground wins, so why shouldnt they expect to get punished for it. Using the ToS inorder to enforce rules should be done. Heck, this isnt even the first time this happened in the MMOG community. Planetside had the same issue early in its game before the lattice focuses players to attack specific targets. SOE came down on the offenders just as hard.

Raph correct me if I wrong but you were advocating giving the player more power to shape his own content, but you as the developer still control how much power the players get, and if someone uses a loophole to get power beyond what you had intended then you would still punish them for it. The issue though I see is that the more power you give anyone the bigger the rules are accompanying that power. The amercian legal system is so complex because of the amount of freedom we enjoy, where as a pure dictatorship really only has one rule. Obey the dictator. (I m over simplifing things) Now interms of gaming that means in order to give the player more power over his enviroment you need write more code granting him that power, but this does bring us back to the issue of content distribution for MMOGs. Since you need to continually write new content, and some point, corners do need to be cut so that a content patch is out the door on time, thus you cant code in all the rules and so you follow them up with ToS additions. I dont see how this is a bad thing. Hard coded rules and ToS rules are still rules that govern the game. Sometimes though all the coding in the world isnt really going to solve an issue. Roof top camping? The only way to really get rid of it is not to allow roof tops and that would make the world a little boring.

The rest of his complaints like pulling an overworld boss, entering unfinished aread have by an large been eliminted by blizzard. There was a terrain bug that allowed you to climb any mountain via a certain specific angle. It is gone. Battleground trading was more or less squashed by requiring Battleground to last atleast 10 minutes in length before points are given. The player casinos werent really against the ToS, but the spam created by the players in high population was, and also scaming also rose signficantly because of this that it was better to eliminate the practice. Teaching kids to gamble isnt all that healthy either.

The overall point though is still WoW is a game, and so is Street Fighter. Neither are very good teaching tools. Both may have a little life lessons in them, but neither is exactly overfollowing as a teaching aid. I guess that is what bothers me the most on this article. Games are entertainment. And while yes, I am defending WoW, if I wanted my child(when I have one) to learn something I would prefer either to teach my child the lesson myself or have it occur in school and not in a video game. Play is important though, and the main focus of games should be that they be fun. I find WoW extremely fun. I enjoy the interaction with my guild and the 40 man instances. I play it specificly to be with my friends and find solo play boring.

So while WoW does appeal to very large scope of people. I dont think this is the game for Sirlin. Where he sees faults, I see strengths. I mean even developers are now telling people that if they want another style of gameplay they should look for it in another game. DDO developer told people in there FAQ bluntly that their game would not have single player gaming, and if they wanted it they would have to look else where.

Did Blizzard change their design form single player back in beta to group? I dont think so. The 40 raid instances were test in beta and from my understanding it was always understood that the best items would be available for raiding or large battleground playing. Single play was always possible but from my understanding of the game. Blizzard did emphasize that their game would have significant group play.

I hope this explains my position better then before.

Patrick Koeppen

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: OOPMan

Me, I'll just be happy when I get some RPGs I can play without the threat of "interaction" with other human beings...

As for knocking WoW, I hope someone does it some more, and then spends some time hammering the whole overblown MMO genre to boot.

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Raph
http://www.raphkoster.com
Now Raph sorry I misquoted you. I'll get it right this time. In your 2000 GDC presentation, one of you points was that "The client is in the hands of the enemy." You then go into specifics about packet sniffers and hacking.

Correct. Many people with an axe to grind think that means I consider the player the enemy, but that's not the case; it just means that the enemy (who IS out there) has easy access to the client because everyone has easy access to the client.

FWIW, that statement is actually attributable to Kelton Flinn, not to me.

Even if you didnt safe guard against everything like you described, not all users will still take advantage of hacking your ssystem. So ultimaltely, are guarding against the malcontent that could ruin the fun of everyone else. This is where I dont see complaints against a ToS working. Programming for a complex game such as a mmog with continually changing content means that content does get pushed out the door a little quicker then it should. Testing isnt as complete because the testing of the game is a continual process and while in a perfect world nothing would slip through, but this world is far from perfect.

By and large, I tend to agree that this is the crux of the problem, but I also think that it's not an excuse that washes with most players. They (generally, and probably rightly) feel that you ought to code against exploits, not merely make rules -- because they regard undesirable exploits of that magnitude as bugs, and feel that bugs should be fixed.

There's many reasons why this isn't always immediately practical, but I do have to admit that some of the examples that Dave cited in his article are cases where code probably should have followed up the ToS with a more permanent fix. The classic examples in (countless) other games are line of sight issues.

interms of gaming that means in order to give the player more power over his enviroment you need write more code granting him that power

Actually, from a technical point of view, it means writing less code. You are coding in all those powers anyway, for the developers. Choosing NOT to expose them, or curbing their use by specific types of players (regular players as opposed to admin-flagged ones) is what takes extra code.

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Meophist

Player vs Developer


Isn't that what it all boils down too? When if comes to MMORPGs, World of Warcraft is very high on the developer side when it comes to player-created content vs developer-created content. That's why the game is very quest-driven. The player is there to experience the content prepared by the developer in a multiplayer setting. It's basically a normal single-player game in an MMO setting. This is why the game discourages player-created content. To put it simply, it's the style the game has chosen to use.


World of Warcraft was never ment for a large amount of player-created content. It is a setting where players can experience the developer's content with other players. Games like EVE is the opposite, where the player is expected to create content for themselves. In a sense, in those type of games, the players are the content, and that's where one gets the virtual sandbox. Similar games include Animal Crossing and The Sims. There is actually very little developer-content in each of those games, relying on player-content to be the basis of the game. These may be single-player games for the most part, it doesn't mean a player can't entertain him/herself with his/her own content. It's still like a single-player EVE.


If The Sims is like a single-player EVE, then World of Warcraft is like a multi-player Final Fantasy. The content is from the developer, and it's up to the player to experience it. Final Fantasy are not sandbox-style games. Player-actions are limited, you can only really do what the developer wants you to do. There's no room for player-based content. That's simply what World of Warcraft is. In Final Fantasy, you're listening to a story, in The Sims, you're writing your own. I don't think one is better than the other. Restricting to the later would mean video games are not art, while for the former, it would mean video games being simply nothing more than interactive art.


Much what I said about EVE is based on assumptions from what I have read about the game. I have not actually played it. Perhaps it would have been better to say Legend of Mana rather than Final Fantasy. In any case, I think restricting oneself to thinking what MMORPGs should be like is a bad thing. MMORPG can be many things, not just a virtual sandbox. Of course, I'm only commenting on one small part of the article...

 

[Joe]

Original Comment by: Mark

I have been looking a long time for an MMO where you can log in and "be alone with other people." A game where there's an interesting, vibrant, and real (in the sense that it's not full of NPCs) world, that I have the option of participating in, but am not forced to in order to get enjoyment out of it - an MMO which, in short, mimicks the nature of real-world social interaction. There are benefits to extroversion and there are benefits to introversion, and they are accompanied by drawbacks, but in my opinion the perfect MMO would have neither benefits nor drawbacks hard-coded. "This is a world," say the developers. "Certain rules apply, some of which are visible, and all of which are impossible to break. We may be forced to intervene directly if it appears that you are using a loophole in order to do something illegal or harmful." Time, in this world, would of course matter, but only in the way that time matters in the real world - time spent practicing, time spent searching, gaining trust from other players based on the age of your account or character. Time spent practicing, in the sense of gaining familiarity with the rules.

But, at the same time, don't throw us into the sandbox without any guidance. There are plenty of other, free ways to do that. If I'm paying by the month, then I want there to be a steady stream of intersting tasks for me to perform or ignore as needed. If they start off interesting, you might get my initial purchase, and the longer they remain interesting, the longer you'll keep getting my monthly fees. And I do mean "interesting" - not farming or level grinding. A good presentation can help with this - we're all sick of killing rats - but it's not strictly necessary.

Ultima Online did a lot of things right, but the grind was not one of them. EVE, I find, has a bit too little direction, and Second Life has way too little. EQ was not interesting for low-level players, it's unviable to be alone in FFXI, and WoW has too much reliance on raid guilds. City of Heroes... is sort of a one-trick horse.

I can think of a few things that might help with this. You can keep a graduated level system if you want, though it would be better if you don't... if you make development item-based, and limit it to a small and finite number of tiers, in which every piece of equipment is balanced against every other piece, to prevent anything from being the best, then you'll have some luck. Here's an idea: the players must invent top-tier equipment and sell it to the NPC government before it's available. Rather than creating NPCs to do a myriad of tasks, you can create quests for low-, mid-, or even high-level players that receives a reward from NPCs. Delivering items? A player drops off an item at the delivery service, and any player can accept that delivery (but, because delivery is important, if there are too few players willing to do that, NPCs would pick up the excess), sealed of course in an unbreakable container, and deliver it to the target for a fee based on the distance needed to travel, the time taken, and how many people are registered as deliverers. The governments might provide salaries for working on constructing roads outside of cities or buildings inside of them, and as an added bonus, players can work on these tasks automatically without even needing to be logged in.

Just to shake things up, let's put it in a science fiction setting, and in order to enhance roleplaying, let's give it an intentionally vague backstory. There are three or four enormous domed cities on a planet with an unbreathable atmosphere inhabited by toxic aliens, and none of their inhabitants know where they came from. The whole world is unexplored and each dome has a separate language that players can learn to speak if they want to. Let certain server-wide events, such as discovering the other cities, happen because early players pioneered them. Every once in a while, a server might choose to reset all the accomplishments (but retain the player data, of course) and re-scramble all the geography. Some shards would do this, of course - give the player options. Do you want a permanent server or a server where the world starts over every year? Every two years? Every six months? A month after the players manage to discover everything? Let some decisions be made by a popular vote inside the game - does this faction declare war on the other faction, or do they finance the construction of a tunnel between the cities that allows for fast, automatic transportation without having to worry about the aliens in between? How does the city react to violence inside its walls - prevent it at a hard-coded level? Allow it, but create a fine for anybody who gets caught? Let the rules be the same as outside the city, where anybody who has PvP enabled can get in a fight? Does your city allow members of enemy factions inside? What about if they have PvE enabled? Other in-game events might be directly player-controlled. Return to any friendly city, and you can change the settings for "enable PvP" and "enable PvE." Any player with PvP enabled can fight anything that moves. And player with PvE enabled can fight enemy factions. The server gives a bounty for each NPC enemy defeated, and also for any member of an opposing faction. This based loosely on the strength of the enemy, but also on the population of the zone in which it was defeated, or how many kills it had made. A few simple algorithms can determine which NPCs spawn where in what quantities.

Let the players buy housing and storage inside the cities at one of several flat rates, without having to worry about rendering it - it's all underground and the player's key takes them directly to their unit. Let the player determine the access for their room - can anybody enter who knows the player's name? How about anybody whom the player has put on his "friends" list? Perhaps anybody who has a key and/or knows the password? Players who want things outside of the city, or who move a lot, can buy vehicles once they pass the test for the appropriate license (perhaps, to make things realistic, there is a waiting period for getting the license as well - you could also do this for certain types of weapon). Anything from speedy motorcycles for biker gangs that terrorize or protect populous zones, to hulking portable buildings which create a safe haven with a breathable atmosphere anywhere they're parked. Use your property, inside or out of cities, for anything - a place for storage, a home, a guild headquarters, or even a storefront. To shake things up, let's say that guilds can own property inside a city, but vehicles must be owned by players. Who knows what could happen? Perhaps whole new cities can be established outside of the ones that are hard-coded.

Outside the cities, air supply becomes a major factor. The atmosphere has too little breathable oxygen in it, so anybody going outside has to have oxygen tanks and an apparatus for using them. A single-tank apparatus will be enough for short trips, but if you plan on switching out your tanks you'll need a double-tank, so you can still breathe if one of them is removed. Longer trips will become rather inviable if you don't have a vehicle with lots of storage, or an apparatus to refill oxygen tanks from things that are available in the environment.

Shit, I'm rambling I'm going to stop now. This would probably be the best MMO ever made, if implemented properly, in my opinion, however.