Sam and Max is about to start its second season. In case you haven't heard about it (what, have you been living under a rock?), its an adventure game series thats released in an episodic fashion, about a dog and a hyperkinetic hyperviolent rabbit crime fighting duo. Its funny.
It also got me wondering why MMOs don't utilize an episodic format. A Tale in the Desert kind of does, in the sense that its unique among MMOs because it actually ends. And then it reboots. But it would be nice to see a story-driven MMO that started up, had a static goal that you could fight for and achieve, and once that was accomplished, the server shut down until the next episode was ready. It would neatly solve the problem that MMOs have with their so-called end game content. Most MMOs have lousy end game content because the worlds don't change; the only thing that CAN change is the players, and when you run out of levels to advance, they have to give you something else to advance with, with better loot or castles to conquer or whatever. And then more (and possibly better) loot or land or whatever gets thrown in the ever-growing game and the treadmill continues forever.
With an episodic format, the MMO would have REAL end game content because it really WOULD end. (Temporarily, of course, and then start up again with a new story.)
Its like the difference between X-Files and Heroes. X-Files strung us along forever, for like what? eighty years?, adding new conspiracies on top of the old but never really resolving anything, until towards the end you didn't even have the main characters anymore, just a bunch of people looking for the people who were looking for the people who were looking for Mulder or Scully or who the hell cares anymore, I stopped watching. Heroes, on the other hand, well, they saved the cheerleader, and saved the world. The End. For a while. And now we're on to a new story, apparently about a boogie monster. That is much more interesting.
I know, I know, I'm repeating myself. I said this before, on my other blog. But it would seem to me to be a cost effective way to put the story back into our MMOs (... did I say "back?" Well, maybe not "back"... as it was never really there to begin with.) Each episode or story progression could reuse a lot of the same sets (maps, artwork, even some quests) and just rework the quests and mob placement to fit the new evolved lore as the story progresses.
I suppose many people, particularly Achiever type players (in the Bartle Four) wouldn't like this, as they tend to be attracted to MMOs because of the ability to advance their characters numbers endlessly (and meaninglessly) until the end of time or the servers shut down, whichever comes first. Though perhaps not? Perhaps the opportunity to take a leading role and actually make a real difference would attract them? Who knows.
Instead of watching TV, and enjoying our characters as they go from one story to the next, why can't we live them? MMOs would be the perfect medium to allow us to take the roles in an ongoing story. Right now, the only kind of story MMOs seem to capture is the kind of bad fiction that makes us rewatch the same events over and over again (albeit with slightly different window dressing at each "tier") until the hero finally figures out how to escape the causal loop (unsubscribing.)
Thursday, October 11, 2007
The Turning Point In MMO Design?
Tobold and Plaguelands, among others, have posted doom and gloom articles about how this year has been bad for MMOs. It has been. Which may be good. It may be the impetus the industry needs to get off the tired EverQuest clone rut its been in.
Vanguard was just a return to the old EQ mechanics. Been there, done that. No thanks. Let's move on.
Auto Assault, which closed this year, was just EQ with cars. Literally. Some cars even healed each other.
Lord of the Rings Online? Again, though it has many improvements, it still has the same old EQ gameplay. I don't recall Legolas in the movies stopping to loot an epic bow off of the orcs he slayed. So why are we still doing that?
Its telling that the major complaint about Tabula Rasa is that its "nothing new." Its sci-fi. It has an FPS-style mouselook movement scheme. It allows the use of cover. It has a cloning feature so you don't need to redo large parts of the game meaning they can actually have quests with consequences. And many other changes, and people say its still not different enough. Some thought it still felt like shoot-and-loot variant, a WoW with guns.
Thats what people want. Something different. We'll know it when we see it. You're not going to beat WoW by making another Holy Trinity EQ-style game. The only Holy Trinity EQ-style game that will beat WoW will be WoW 2.
So the market has spoken. The worst thing that could have happened to MMO fans would have been for Vanguard or LotrO to have been a raging success, supplanting WoW in the hearts of millions. If that (shudder) had happened, we wouldn't see anything but the same old Holy Trinity, loot-and-level game play for the next ten years. And its about time we moved on.
So now maybe more developers will look for new directions to take the genre. Or new niches to fill. That's why I'm eagerly awaiting PotBS. It actually looks like a refreshing change of pace. Unless the ships end up healing each other. They don't, do they? Please tell me they don't.
And now, as Tobold points out, maybe now they'll raise the amount of money they need to properly develop and polish their games too.
Vanguard was just a return to the old EQ mechanics. Been there, done that. No thanks. Let's move on.
Auto Assault, which closed this year, was just EQ with cars. Literally. Some cars even healed each other.
Lord of the Rings Online? Again, though it has many improvements, it still has the same old EQ gameplay. I don't recall Legolas in the movies stopping to loot an epic bow off of the orcs he slayed. So why are we still doing that?
Its telling that the major complaint about Tabula Rasa is that its "nothing new." Its sci-fi. It has an FPS-style mouselook movement scheme. It allows the use of cover. It has a cloning feature so you don't need to redo large parts of the game meaning they can actually have quests with consequences. And many other changes, and people say its still not different enough. Some thought it still felt like shoot-and-loot variant, a WoW with guns.
Thats what people want. Something different. We'll know it when we see it. You're not going to beat WoW by making another Holy Trinity EQ-style game. The only Holy Trinity EQ-style game that will beat WoW will be WoW 2.
So the market has spoken. The worst thing that could have happened to MMO fans would have been for Vanguard or LotrO to have been a raging success, supplanting WoW in the hearts of millions. If that (shudder) had happened, we wouldn't see anything but the same old Holy Trinity, loot-and-level game play for the next ten years. And its about time we moved on.
So now maybe more developers will look for new directions to take the genre. Or new niches to fill. That's why I'm eagerly awaiting PotBS. It actually looks like a refreshing change of pace. Unless the ships end up healing each other. They don't, do they? Please tell me they don't.
And now, as Tobold points out, maybe now they'll raise the amount of money they need to properly develop and polish their games too.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Scars Are But a Mark of Victory
Or so I've been told. REPEATEDLY. I used to love the voiceovers in EQ2. Nowadays, I think they should add a feature that makes the guys shut up if you've already heard the line a hundred times.
Monday, October 8, 2007
MMOs Hit the Mainstream With a Truck
Just in case you didn't notice here, here, or here, MMOs are obviously mainstream now.
The commercial is funny, though I'm not sure what Toyota was thinking. Judging from the community I met when I played World of Warcraft, its players will need their parent's permission to buy that truck. That truck will take up a lot of allowance money.
The commercial is funny, though I'm not sure what Toyota was thinking. Judging from the community I met when I played World of Warcraft, its players will need their parent's permission to buy that truck. That truck will take up a lot of allowance money.
Friday, October 5, 2007
A Quest For Missions
Like Cuppycake and others, I sometimes tire of my favorite MMORPG and need a break. I'll be back, but for now, I've been toying around with other MMORPGs, like Sword of the New World (which is pretty, but one incessant hack-and-slash grind that gets old fast) and a few betas. I also decided to revisit some old MMOs I never really gave much of a chance to.
I decided to resubscribe to City of Heroes for one month, just as something to do on the side when I didn't feel like logging into EverQuest II. And, despite the game being several years old, and despite being pretty low in level (my character Futureman ["I'm from the future, and you're history!"] is only level 11), the game still feels lively. I was literally pelted with group invitations. So many, that it even got annoying (since I wanted to do the solo Invention system tutorial quests.)
How is it that City of Heroes manages to be so much more social, with an active and lively pick up group scene, when it seems so dead on most EverQuest II servers (Antonia Bayle being one of the notable exceptions, and while not bad, its not that great there either)?
I think its largely due to its Mission system. In City of Heroes, you benefit from completing any mission that someone in your group is on. Also, the missions scale based on the size and level of your party.
In EverQuest II or World of Warcraft, and other games that utilize traditional quest design, you only benefit if its your quest that you complete. And while some quests do scale based on level, none really scale based on size of the party or its makeup. This makes it harder to find a group since you can't just join any group; it has to be one that you need, of your specific level, in your specific zone, doing your specific tasks. Or subtasks, since some quests require multiple steps.
Imagine going to a guard and asking how you can help and being told that when ready, a nobleman (or a merchant or whatever, it can be slightly randomized) needs to be escorted through a dangerous pass. Along the way bandits spawn based on the level, number, and class of the party members. You can solo it, but at the same time, there's nothing to prevent you from partying with nearly anyone you want, and everyone benefits since the mission would be shared by all. Whats more immersive, asking the town guard how you can help secure the protection of the town's citizens, or fetching some random wizard's slippers, then delivering his mail, and maybe killing ten rats in his basement while you are at it. Heroic rats, mind you. Level 70 heroic rats that could single handedly wipe out the entire continent of Antonica if its inhabitants wandered close enough to it to generate aggro. Level 70 heroic rats that don't move otherwise and you need five friends to help out. Five friends, that is, who haven't done this quest already, because they get nothing out of it if they have.
EverQuest II has something like 5 billion quests now. That's quite enough already. Quests tear people apart. Didn't the original EverQuest introduce the mission system to begin with? What happened to it and why don't we see more of it?
I decided to resubscribe to City of Heroes for one month, just as something to do on the side when I didn't feel like logging into EverQuest II. And, despite the game being several years old, and despite being pretty low in level (my character Futureman ["I'm from the future, and you're history!"] is only level 11), the game still feels lively. I was literally pelted with group invitations. So many, that it even got annoying (since I wanted to do the solo Invention system tutorial quests.)
How is it that City of Heroes manages to be so much more social, with an active and lively pick up group scene, when it seems so dead on most EverQuest II servers (Antonia Bayle being one of the notable exceptions, and while not bad, its not that great there either)?
I think its largely due to its Mission system. In City of Heroes, you benefit from completing any mission that someone in your group is on. Also, the missions scale based on the size and level of your party.
In EverQuest II or World of Warcraft, and other games that utilize traditional quest design, you only benefit if its your quest that you complete. And while some quests do scale based on level, none really scale based on size of the party or its makeup. This makes it harder to find a group since you can't just join any group; it has to be one that you need, of your specific level, in your specific zone, doing your specific tasks. Or subtasks, since some quests require multiple steps.
Imagine going to a guard and asking how you can help and being told that when ready, a nobleman (or a merchant or whatever, it can be slightly randomized) needs to be escorted through a dangerous pass. Along the way bandits spawn based on the level, number, and class of the party members. You can solo it, but at the same time, there's nothing to prevent you from partying with nearly anyone you want, and everyone benefits since the mission would be shared by all. Whats more immersive, asking the town guard how you can help secure the protection of the town's citizens, or fetching some random wizard's slippers, then delivering his mail, and maybe killing ten rats in his basement while you are at it. Heroic rats, mind you. Level 70 heroic rats that could single handedly wipe out the entire continent of Antonica if its inhabitants wandered close enough to it to generate aggro. Level 70 heroic rats that don't move otherwise and you need five friends to help out. Five friends, that is, who haven't done this quest already, because they get nothing out of it if they have.
EverQuest II has something like 5 billion quests now. That's quite enough already. Quests tear people apart. Didn't the original EverQuest introduce the mission system to begin with? What happened to it and why don't we see more of it?
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Pirates of the Loading Screen
Pirates of the Burning Sea is now in beta and they are temporarily giving beta access to people who sign up for a stress test. Now, this is a STRESS test, which is when they put on more people than they can possibly handle in order to see when their servers topple over. That means you will most likely end up staring at loading screens, lag, and slideshow gameplay. But if you have been eagerly awaiting this game, this is YOUR chance to experience a very laggy facsimile of it.
The beta is available on Fileplanet, and its available to everyone, even non-subscribers. So save your $7 a month and download now.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Tag, I'm It
Damionov on Voyages in Eternity tagged me. So this is my first meme. Well, the first one I'm doing. So, here goes.
~ The Rules ~
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. List eight (8) random facts about yourself.
3. Tag eight people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving them a comment on their blogs.
That takes care of Rule 1.
~ The Random Facts
1. My cat's name is Sistercat. My sister's name is... actually, I don't have a sister.
2. My wife hits me every night in my sleep because of snoring. I tell her I'd stop snoring if I could get a good nights sleep.
3. I visited Senegal last summer. I don't speak French, so I had a hard time talking to people. I walked into a restaurant and tried to ask if they were open, but they said "no, we do not serve breakfast." They thought I wanted eggs. I just wanted a gyro...
4. I am nearsighted. When I wear contacts, I wear Focus Dailies brand disposables... that expired three years ago. I usually wear glasses, but the contacts are still fine. I think.
5. I have been brewing homemade beer. Except for one bottle that I over-carbonated (it burst), the results have been very good so far, especially if I'm patient and let them lager (sit in the fridge) for a week or so after carbonating. (Its hard to be patient with beer.)
6. I have a lot of leftover champagne from my recent wedding. Its taking up valuable space in my beverage center that I could be using to store my homemade beer. Anyone know any good champagne cocktails?
7. I used to be in a goth band. We wrote a song called "Clawing Curtains" for a cat-themed Projekt Records compilation. Proceeds go to support no-kill cat shelters in the Chicago area.
8. I used to DJ a death metal radio show for my college radio station. Nowadays, I listen to the unfortunately named genre of music called 'futurepop'.
~ Tagging
I don't know eight people. So I'll tag fellow blogging guildmates in the Explorers of Legend: Corwin, Largo, and Scott.
~ The Rules ~
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. List eight (8) random facts about yourself.
3. Tag eight people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving them a comment on their blogs.
That takes care of Rule 1.
~ The Random Facts
1. My cat's name is Sistercat. My sister's name is... actually, I don't have a sister.
2. My wife hits me every night in my sleep because of snoring. I tell her I'd stop snoring if I could get a good nights sleep.
3. I visited Senegal last summer. I don't speak French, so I had a hard time talking to people. I walked into a restaurant and tried to ask if they were open, but they said "no, we do not serve breakfast." They thought I wanted eggs. I just wanted a gyro...
4. I am nearsighted. When I wear contacts, I wear Focus Dailies brand disposables... that expired three years ago. I usually wear glasses, but the contacts are still fine. I think.
5. I have been brewing homemade beer. Except for one bottle that I over-carbonated (it burst), the results have been very good so far, especially if I'm patient and let them lager (sit in the fridge) for a week or so after carbonating. (Its hard to be patient with beer.)
6. I have a lot of leftover champagne from my recent wedding. Its taking up valuable space in my beverage center that I could be using to store my homemade beer. Anyone know any good champagne cocktails?
7. I used to be in a goth band. We wrote a song called "Clawing Curtains" for a cat-themed Projekt Records compilation. Proceeds go to support no-kill cat shelters in the Chicago area.
8. I used to DJ a death metal radio show for my college radio station. Nowadays, I listen to the unfortunately named genre of music called 'futurepop'.
~ Tagging
I don't know eight people. So I'll tag fellow blogging guildmates in the Explorers of Legend: Corwin, Largo, and Scott.
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