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A walk through MMO past: ideas lost along the way
MMO.Maverick
Member CommonPosts: 7,619
Once upon a time in the early years of MMO gaming, the MMO worlds were closer to being virtual worlds than today. It was a time of wonder and adventure. It was the best of times, it was the -
Ah, hell, can't keep it up like that 
Anyway, short story: everything changes, also in the progress of games and gaming. Good things are gained, and good things are lost (the same applies to bad things ofc).
While computers got better and more advanced, we've seen some genres and trends fade away into oblivion: there's the text based adventures that got replaced by the graphical adventure games even if the textbased ones often had a more immersive atmosphere than the graphical ones. You had the era of the godgames like Populous and Dungeon Keeper, the rich variety of MUDS, the predecessors of MMORPG's, the adventure games like Sierra's Kings & Space Quest series that died out, all left their mark on a past long gone now.
The same applies to MMORPG's: in the 10-14 years of its existence the MMO genre has undergone some changes as well in its progression.
What are the ideas and features that have gotten sidelined during this progression?
Exploration: wandering through EQ, it felt like a vast world. There were so many places off the beaten track that you weren't sent to and that you didn't need to go to, but where you wanted to travel to in a sense of exploration. Later MMO's became smaller and more 'functional', fewer locations that lend themselves for just exploring. The only MMO's in later years that build further upon this 'wanderlust', that sense of exploration, were spiritual successors as Vanguard and SWG with their huge and vast landscapes.
RPG & virtual worlds: UO, SWG and the MUD's had a lot more things to do next to the quest/level/mob grind track of many MMO's these days. There were trades and professions that weren't just tagged on, but that worked and had meaning. As a number of devs from several MMO companies have stated, the 'RPG' in 'MMORPG' over the years has been made irrelevant, a minor sidenote to the variety and richness that it used to be.
Meaning of Death: hate it, love it, the fact was that the realisation that you actually risked losing something important, namely XP and possibly even your gear in EQ, gave the fights an extra sense of danger in battles and heightened feel of victory when you won a tough battle. I don't see it coming back, but the treatment of death in a lot of current MMO's, where you die and lose a handful of seconds time, has taken off the edge in battle.
These were the gameplay aspects that I felt missing in current MMO's, especially the themepark ones. Of course, the current situation of the MMO market is also merely a phase, after a few years things will have changed again for the good as well as for the bad. We see already some new MMO gameplay elements arise with the upcoming MMO's, as well as a revival of some old neglected features, like exploration and RPG/story.
It's sad though that not all the good elements of former games can be kept, along with the new improvements.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Comments
Meaning of Death: hate it, love it, the fact was that the realisation that you actually risked losing something important, namely XP and possibly even your gear in EQ, gave the fights an extra sense of danger in battles and heightened feel of victory when you won a tough battle. I don't see it coming back, but the treatment of death in a lot of current MMO's, where you die and lose a handful of seconds time, has taken off the edge in battle.
if you want meaningful Death, I dont understand why you would want a DP. If anything, you should be asking for Perma Death. The most meaningful.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
I thought Diablo.
That was kinda scary to play when one of the types of ways to play meant your character is gone, period.
I agree. My first MMO was WoW way back at launch. Everything was new and amazing at the time. It made me want to explore, and I did for the first week until I found out exploration was pointless because there was no reward. I swam around Teldrassil my second day in the game just to see what I could find. There were no unmapped places or things to discover. No cool loot to stumble upon in some secret cave.
And death meant nothing in the game. The only inconvenience was running back to my corpse. There was no sense of danger. No sense of adventure. No thrill of battle.
I played WoW for a few years and left a year after BC came out. I've tried a few MMOs after that, and only a few have kept me interested more than a month. None of them I've tried got it just right. LotRO had gorgeous landscapes and vistas but again had no reward for exploration. AoC was similar, but worse.
Ryzom had the most "alive" world. DF rewarded exploration (somewhat, but needs more) and had the excitement of battle and death. Both are awesome games, but both have their weaknesses. If I could mix the best of Ryzom and DF with sprinklings of VG, SWG and EVE that'd be the game that would hold my interest for quite a while.
Current: None
Played: WoW, CoX, SWG, LotRO, EVE, AoC, VG, CO, Ryzom, DF, WAR
Tried: Lineage2, Dofus, EQ2, CoS, FE, UO, Wurm, Wakfu
Future: The Repopulation, ArcheAge, Black Desert, EQN
Lol. Pulling an argument into extreme absolutes, eh?
I was referring to the 'risk vs reward' model that the EQ devs were a proponent of: the fact that a higher risk of loss - of any kind - could also heighten the excitement that an activity can provide. Of course, the downside is frustration when you fail and experience that extra loss, and that's the reason that the 'sting' in death has been removed.
Perma death is counter productive - although some might like it - a risk/reward model doesn't have to be.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I agree with everything except this. Death discouraged players from trying anything not safe. It led to boring play. People were scared to explore, scared to do anything they haven't done before, because dying meant a lot of lost time(not only XP but retrieveing your corpse was an idiotic endeavour).
Also, lets not forget when you died in EQ if you had a cleric death literally meant nothing. You lost nothing, expect a few seconds. This led to no one doing anything without a cleric. Most of us even had second accounts to drag our cleric along. My first few months of EQ deaths were a PITA. However, once I had my 2nd account, and a cleric, death meant nothing, and I died without care.
That is boring gameplay.
In my WoW playing days I didn't want to die, because it cost a lot of gold. Dying could bankrupt you!! Also, in DDO its the same thing. Dying ain't cheap. I find these two games had a harsher penalty than EQ, because in EQ you could get a rez and lose nothing. In DDO and WOW you are paying some serious coinage. That is not meaningless.
Also in DDO if you die and fail the quest you get no XP. Trust me you don't want to die and fail a quest. All that time is wasted. Again, can't say the same about EQ, because each kill you got XP. If you died, not a big deal; 96% rez and back to killing.
I miss that so much :'(
? Um back in Vanilla, the Armor damage was a much bigger deal than it is today.
also if you like to explore, than why do you need a reward to do so? seems to me, you need your hand held. aka Developer Force.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
yup, I totally agree,
...remebering those initial days of playing Diablo/D2/LoD were a "wanderlust" indeed, to say the least.
can't put my finger on it, as to what's happening with this newer MMORPG-makers' world ? It's become a coporate monster of its own, with values like "give the least amount for the most profit" ? I want to say that it's me, because the MMORPG times are a changin' ? but I don't feel it the way I used to.
I believed nothing was ever going to be as good as D2/LoD back in 2003, but then in 2005 Guild Wars came out, and I was happily blown away again for awhile. I'm confident Diablo 3 may very well bring some of this back again. We'll see right ?
Let's try and be hopeful, maybe this year, or the next, ... more of those, or future greedy corporate game-makers' will see the err in their ways, and return with us to the experience of playing true MMO/RPG games, the days of adventure, surprise, wanderlust,..., and all those other adjectives that you mentioned. ? yup.
Ahhh yes, but I was dreaming.
Death was still not a big deal. Sure the money was harder to come by in Vanilla, but there was still no real sting. Plus, I didn't have a toon that wore plate, so my armor costs were nowhere near as bad as they could've been.
You either didn't read the entire post or are ignoring parts of it. "There were no unmapped places or things to discover."
Why does anyone explore? Not just in a game, but in the real world? There is always a reward of some kind. It doesn't have to be monetary or a physical item. Whether it's looking for treasure, looking for new species, looking for lost civilizations, looking for uncharted places, etc. It's the discovery! Again, I keep coming back to this, it's the sense of adventure and danger! It doesn't have to be a cool weapon or armor, although that would be cool too.
With WoW there was literally nothing to discover or find by exploring. I take that back, a few years ago there were some "hidden" places on the map you couldn't easily get to, like the Gnome airport by Ironforge. I figured out how to get there and also made my way to the farm further down the mountain and above Menethil Harbor. That was fun, but Blizzard clearly didn't want people getting there because they patched the game a few months later and broke my trick for getting there.
MO seemed really promising because there wasn't going to be an in-game world map. Mapmakers and explorers were going to be legitimate ways to play the game. Too bad MO is turning out to be a turd.
Current: None
Played: WoW, CoX, SWG, LotRO, EVE, AoC, VG, CO, Ryzom, DF, WAR
Tried: Lineage2, Dofus, EQ2, CoS, FE, UO, Wurm, Wakfu
Future: The Repopulation, ArcheAge, Black Desert, EQN
Death penalty.
My ideas on this are death penalties should be choosable give bonuses for higher penalties and act as a seperator. Instead of the game being split up into different level groups (0-10, 10-20 etc.) their split up into different death penalty groups. This split doesn't have to be different servers or areas it would be best if they are all fighting together, it's just how much they are willing to risk.
For example in eve you can choose how much you risk by which ship you fly, more expensive ships can do more but cheap small ships still have their place. Unfortunately in eve there is still a lot of travel time to get back to where you died and a clone cost (which can easily be more expensive than all the cheap ships) that's pretty constant no matter what ship you use.
Ideally you would be able to compete with the lowest death penalty people within a few hours of play adding that death penalty gives bonuses and lets you train/use highers skills. At any time you can turn off that death penalty to set yourself back to low level so you can enjoy the easy life again. Lastly I'd strongly suggest a skill based system for this as it lets you advance sideways which would be a good thing if you started to hit limits in a few hours of play.
Into the breach meatbags
I would add crafting and housing to that list too. Yes they are still present, but they are sideshows, easy and usually pointless.
I would agree with those that say the production value, graphics, coding and quests are much better today. There were many tedious elements of older games, silly systems and the like. But instead of improving everything with each successive generation, they just gutted everything instead.
I do actually like both modern games and the old virtual worlds. The difference is in the feel. I have no vested interest in whats going on in the modern ones. Its just feels like I am playing a game, so I don't care about the lore, the names of bosses or dungeons etc. There is nothing to do except combat for the most part. And that's cool, but if that's all there is to do, then I tire of it quickly. I have not hit max level in any game since 2004, nor have I subbed past the first month.
They are also too easy. People mistake this for how hard the combat is in a boss fight. You often hear, ' well you must have never done Whatever Dungeon'. Its not that, its all the rest. Question marks over npcs, waypoints, insta-travelling and easier combat mechanics make the game play like you are on auto-pilot. There is no sense of accomplishment because you can do everything in very short order, alone in most cases, without even reading the quest text.
I have no vested interest in the world at all, only what level I am or what gear I can get. If I treat it like its just a game, the current games are pretty well done compared to the first generation. But I just can't seem to commit to a 'game' for this genre. I play many other games for that ( mostly FPSers). For myself, it needs to feel like a world, where I am interested in what is going on besides what level I am.
What I miss most is a class less system, where you can access all in game content with one character. Where on one character you can have as many or as little skills as you wish, where you can wear/ wield anything in the game if you earn the levels for them, where you can do what you want when you want and not have anyone pre decide that for you.
Crafting has much to be desired in todays games. I miss being able to customize my weapons/ armor abilities how I wish. I miss being able to mix mage/ range/ melee armor and be able to mage in range gear if I choose to do so.
I miss the unpredictability of what players are going to do. The whole see elf know elf weakness and strengths counter elf system makes me *yawn*
I miss killing a guy in game and dancing around in his gear while he comes up and yells at me to give it back. LOL
I miss creating my own enemies and allies, and not having factions predetermined for me. I can make my own friends/ allies/ groups without the game choosing who to kill/ not kill.
I miss being able to kill my own guild members if they don't shut up when I tell them to. ( and yes I gave them fair warning. I told them if they didn;t shut up I was going to kill them, they didn;t think I was serious- not my fault. ) lol
I hate linear systems that are more like a rollercoaster. The path is set for you, and your just along for the ride. I mean if I want to do that.. riding an actual roller coaster is much more fun.
And I missed getting to play whatever game it was that would have let me do all of this.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Oh I hear you.
I like to draw an anology with the movies industry (works even for music). At first, there were movies. The early ones. It was a small world, a bit geeky at the beginning, before one day it became mass-entertainment. The third age of Hollywood, born from the 70's mainstream, concretized in the 80's, finally put to a handful of basic formats by the 90's. So much for culture and diversity.
Independents have always existed ever since the 70's, and nowadays it is a source of insight and quality--Cohen brothers and the likes (it's not about appreciating or not the independent movies, it's about realizing they're the only ones digging new paths these days). Again, the same goes true with music.
If you look at it, there's a "grace" that movies reached by the 50's-60's that is now part of history. It reminds me a lot of the golden age of MMOs, before they became mainstream. Well, as someome astutely pointed out on this forum, they're not exactly mainstream--more like known to the mainstream. But the big figures are there, already, and it's now business as usual (many people at the top of the game industry are not even players themselves...) Until, soon I hope, costs can be cut again and independents are able anew to produce and develop their thing--whatever that will be.
I think that the game companies in the begininning of MMO's had their own vision or focus, as players it was our choice to function within their structure and they generally ignored players" whims" as far as what they'd like to see in the games (which to me personally was a good thing).
The turning point to me was when the companies decided to not just listen but to start acting on what their populations wanted to see changed within their games and with patching and expansions its began to change things. The vision was lost and for better or worse capitalism took over.
I personally want a game that holds to its vision, to me personally thats what immersion is about.
Couldn't agree more! I remember back in 2000, when I was a level 12 in EQ1 and decided to move my bind point from small-town Qeynos to large city Freeport with a friend, that actually meant something huge! It actually meant begging a wiz for a teleport to WC, and then still walking almost an hour in what was a dangerous environment for us. There was no way of quick travel. I spoke to another ingame friend the next day who found out I was in Freeport, and he just assumed that meant that we wouldn't be leveling together anymore. It was just impossible, because the distance between the two cities was so massive.
And all I ever did in EQ was explore, explore and explore. There was so much to see! There was no good in-game map. It was up to traveling everywhere by foot. And that way I saw nearly every outside zone in every continent even at level 16. It was rewarding in itself to see it. Even though all I did was walk about.
eg Uncharted, Dangerous, Player communities, destroyable/creative environment etc. Back to basics.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem