To the designers: How to keep that MMORPG market fresh

I’d first of all like to file myself away among the millions of gamers who have (mis?)invested hundreds of days of playtime into the eternal timesink that the modern webosphere likes to call the massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). There, I said it.

For me, as with most people, it started with an innocent-enough looking game: EverQuest. Originally, a friend suggested it to me in a casual conversation at work. I told him I’d been playing Phantasy Star Online for Dreamcast and was thoroughly enjoying it and he guessed (correctly) that EverQuest would probably be right up my alley. Though my time playing EverQuest was short, I spent ungodly amounts of time on it’s sequel, as well as equally monstrous amounts of time on everyone’s favorite online game: World of Warcraft. Toss in a dash of Guild Wars, Dungeons and Dragons Online, City of Heroes and Silk Road Online and we’ve got a recipe for horrendous grades and social atrophy.

The unfortunate part of this story is that all of the games I listed are, in essence, exactly the same! Do away with the differences in graphics, network support and fees, and the silly user interfaces and you’re left with exactly what all of the multi-user dungeon (MUD, those gnarly text-only games only those with stomachs of steel can tolerate) players have had for decades. I target you, I cast spell, server calculates resistances and diminishes the usefulness of my spell, spell hits you… ad naseum. These newer, graphics-based games all have their slight spin on this theme, but when it comes down to it, they’re all the same at heart. When we look at these games with eyes as objective as we can possibly have, when we really look at these games at the “meta” level, we can see that all of the small differences between them are different manifestations of the same thing!

What I mean here is that there are several things which, like it or not, are common to what it is that makes an RPG. Then, there are things (again, like it or not) which are fundamental to an online game. Combine them and, you guessed it, you get a new set of things which are common to all (or at least many) online RPGs. What are these things, and what have they done to the current generation of online RPGs? Let’s take a look.

1) Aesthetic comparison among players

This is arguably the most important aspect of any online game. In my experience, one of the necessary fuels to drive a person through the long grind ahead of them in any game is the wish to be compared as equals to a certain group of players far superior to themselves. Everyone wants to look like the hardcore raiders. The need for players to make quick comparison between themselves and other players manifests itself in today’s games mostly as the ability to make a quick glance at another player’s armor or transportation implement. For instance: in World of Warcraft, it’s extremely easy to tell who’s raided which zones (and for how long) simply by looking at the armor that they’re wearing. At a much lower level, it’s very easy to simply watch someone run past you and parse them visually either into the “regular mount” or “epic mount” group.

2) Manifestation of total time played

There are many things that make online gaming fun. The reasons are different for every player. In my opinion, however, a really big influence on the lower-level population of a gaming community is seeing what kinds of cool things those who’ve played the game for a long period of time have attained. This goes along very strongly with point #1, because essentially any items or status symbols which you’ve attained are correlated with the amount of time you’ve played.

Contrary to point #1, though, I believe that there is a “break point” where the manifestation of total time played and the aesthetic comparison among players is split. This point occurs at the level cap in most online games. For example, in EverQuest II, the level cap was traditionally 50. Players below 50 had as their main pursuit the attainment of this level cap. For players who had reached level 50, however, there was no additional way to project a signal as to their total time played in the form of a level. They had to apply that same amount of time used getting to 50 toward other pursuits, such as the aquisition of items unavailable to those of lower levels (or, available, but time consuming to retreive). This point, #2, is stronger than #1 in that it encompasses the latter. Put simply: offline RPGs have an ending, with an end boss and credits. People stop playing once they reach this point, or at least are more likely to, because they have nothing to compare themselves to (except in the case where friends are playing the same game, but disregard that). In online games, however, the world is persistent, there are always new players, and always others to whom you may seem godlike. Clearly there is both an incentive to reach the top level (catch up with those ahead of you) and to remain at the top level and look for silly marginal upgrades.

3) Involuntary consumption of time for menial tasks

Running. Everyone hates running. You may think you like running, but that’s just because you haven’t had to do it very much. One of the main ways that games are differentiating themselves in the current MMORPG generation is through their implementation of player travel. World of Warcraft, for example, has a vast system of flight paths that allow players to travel between landmarks fairly quickly. There is still a finite travel time, and I’m sure they have their reasons. To contrast, Guild Wars has a system of cities and outposts among which you can travel instantly, given that your destination is a place you’ve already been. Much like the World of Warcraft system, it allows for designated travel between two well-defined locations, but the Guild Wars implementation is, in my opinion, very advantageous.

Other menial tasks include grinding, which I’ve already talked about in #2. Killing the same mob over and over by clicking a single button (or even a series of buttons) is the number one cause of alcoholism in the United States*.

*Not really

Great, thanks for spelling that out for us. Now what are you going to do about it?

Beacuse I hate naysaying without the commensurate attempt at problem solving, I do have some ideas that game developers may or may not have already thought about as they begin development of a new generation of MMORPGs.

What can we do about this manifestation of total time played in the world? This problem will never end. Gaming companies, like all good businesses, are designed primarily to make money. Money is made by keeping customers and having those returning customers provide additional revenue. No rational company would forgo that (unless they’ve thought of something completely brilliant). However, maybe we could come up with something a bit better than raiding? Raiding is the same in every game. More people translates directly into less control of those who know what’s going on, and the raid mobs and encounters have to be dumbed down to compensate. World of Warcraft started with 40-man raids, EverQuest II started with 24-man raids. I prefer the latter. But, why do people want to raid at all? To me, it’s a manifestation of the want to increase your prowess and aesthetic charm by showing off your items to the newbs in the towns. Even if you don’t want to show them the items, you want the items so that if it came down to you and them in a fight: you’d win.

How about a more single-player approach to the end game? I read a suggestion somewhere that RPGs would be better if their online component were approached in a manner more like Neverwinter Nights. It’s primarily a single player game in which you can set up personal servers. So: why not come up with a system where users can start their own servers which are tightly coupled to the company’s? That way, users can do what they want, be the best on their server, and compare to others if they want to? If the personal servers are tightly coupled to the company’s, it would be very simple to alleviate security concerns through a pro-active patch system and very intolerant exploitation policy. Players could even move servers, or at least copy characters onto multiple servers (for a nominal fee?). Most of you are probably thinking open battle.net from the Diablo 2 days, but: if we’ve come so far in graphics, what’s to think we haven’t come a proportional distance in internet security and software distribution?

Imagine a more “dungeon siege”-y approach to the distributed gaming? Imagine a large public server like our beloved World of Warcraft and EverQuest II servers with the ability of characters to move on and off freely to private ones? How is that any different than what many First-person Shooter games are doing nowadays? I believe this type of solution attacks some of these problems at the core.

There are plenty of other ways to handle some of issues too. There are also way more issues. You can be sure that we’ll try to tackle some of these in the future, but there’s some food for thought!