What if J.R.R. Tolkien had named his classic fantasy trilogy How Frodo Destroyed the One Ring at Mount Doom? Thankfully he had the good sense and propriety not to do so as it would have been foolish to have revealed the climax of the story within the title of the book.
Part of the reward for the reader who invests their time in a work of fiction, is the gradual revelation of the story. The same paradigm should apply to MMOs and virtual worlds that are story based. As the player delves deeper into the world they are rewarded by experiencing more of the story. I’m not a big fan of story based MMO’s but if you are going to create one, then at least do it correctly.
Why then is Blizzard so eager to destroy this classic relationship of author, story and reader by routinely previewing the future in the World of Warcraft?
Arthas Will Die Whether You Like it Or Not
To illustrate my point, today as I loaded up WoW I was greeted with a small graphic that was an advertisement for Patch 3.3: The Fall of the Lich King. The name of the patch bothered me. It seems that Blizzard has preordained that Arthas will die on schedule in the next path. This is insulting to the players because it assumes that Arthas will be killed regardless if it happens or not.
Apparently Blizzard believes in creating a virtual world where everything is scripted down to the last detail. Everything is calculated and preordained. It’s almost as if the efforts of the players are irrelevant and subservient to the decrees of the game designers and storytellers at Blizzard.
As far as Blizzard is concerned, *you* the player are not that important in the grand scheme of things. Events will unfold in Azeroth at the appointed time and place. You the player are impotent and powerless to shape your virtual world? Just shut up and play.
The BlizzCon Grand Reveal
When you think about it, the very same problem plagues the annual BlizzCon gathering. In this event, Blizzard basically previews the next expansion for millions of players around the world. It’s nothing more than a gloried spoiler fest. By doing this they are cheating their millions of fans by removing the element of surprise and destroying the thrill of discovery.
For the next WoW expansion Cataclysm we already know far too much about what will happen and it’s still less than 2 years away.
Why can’t players be allowed to experience content as it happens? Why is Blizzard so intent on previewing content years in advance? Why is Blizzard cheating their subscribers by revealing spoilers, important details and plot-lines when they haven’t even happened yet in the course of time?
The Right of Self-Determination for Players
I’ve long held the belief that players in virtual worlds should have the right to tell their own stories and create their own futures. Instead of being slaves to predestination, players need to know that the fate of their server/shard is in their hands — not the hands of the developers.
Let me play the devil’s advocate: why does Arthas have to die at all? What if the population of a particular server decides they would like to serve Arthas instead of defeating them? Shouldn’t that be their choice?
When you preordain the future you have taken away liberty from your players. Players become spectators instead of participants.
When a particular outcome is guaranteed what is the point of being part of a virtual world?
Conclusion
The video game industry and their marketing departments are seemingly trapped in a sort of preview mania. You have beta testing, patch testing, demo versions and countless magazine and web previews for upcoming video games. All of these things exist to generate buzz about their games. In the end it’s all about money.
If story didn’t matter the element of surprise and discovery would be inconsequential. But, for MMOs that are so heavily scripted and story-based it’s critical to guard and respect these fundamental mechanics. MMO companies need to stop treating players like children and allow them to experience the story for themselves.
Even better, have the courage to give players the tools and autonomy to make their own stories and create their own destinies. What a shame that a decade after the release of the venerable EverQuest we are nowhere closer to realizing that dream in a mass market MMO.
-Wolfshead
The problem is, this is exactly what many players want. They want lots of detail, even if it means ruining the surprise.
Most stories have an end that most intelligent people would call obvious. The guy will get the girl (or the other guy in modern stories). The magical doohicky will be destroyed and the bad guy banished forever. The murderer will be revealed and brought to justice. There’s a reason why Hollywood does stereotypical happy endings, because they work. Most people enjoy stories even if they know the ending; you’ve probably still read a book or seen a movie you’ve seen before, even though you know the end.
Yes, some of us do like stories that surprise us. I love the movie Fallen, even though the ending isn’t typical. I also really enjoyed the Banewreaker books by Jacqueline Carey, because it gave the typical ending but from the “other” point of view. (Although another developer didn’t read the second book in the series because he could predict the ending too easily.) Realize that people like me (and the other developer) are in the minority. I like to be challenged, to have my perception messed with in some ways. (But, even I can still enjoy a story where I pretty much can guess the ending.)
So, I think Blizzard can still tell a “good” story even if it gives it a name equivalent to How Frodo Destroyed the One Ring at Mount Doom. (Probably because storytelling in games is so abysmal anyway, anything coherent gets elevated to the level of masterpiece.) Let’s face it, WoW is all about the players being the heroes. It was never in doubt that the Lich King would fall and the “good guys” would be victorious. There’s been nothing at all in the game that indicates that the situation is anything other than Blizzard setting the pace and the players being along for the ride. This has been a major complaint for a lot of people, that the game is essentially static and there is almost always only one possible resolution to many of the scenarios in the game.
There is also the issue that many players want to know everything. They are the true definition of fans: fanatics. Most of them are the geeky type; the people who can quote a movie (Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, Rocky Horror Picture Show) chapter and verse, but still go watch it every weekend for a month. These are the types who speculate which Star Trek captain could kick another’s ass in different scenarios despite it not being important to the setting in the slightest. They want to know the trivia because they are fanatical.
I agree, perhaps we could tell better stories if we didn’t have to spill everything out before the story is even available to be enjoyed. But, that’s about as realistic as hoping people will play nicely together so we don’t have to waste money that could pay for development on hiring CSRs to play babysitters for the troublemakers.
“The problem is, this is exactly what many players want. They want lots of detail, even if it means ruining the surprise.”
Doing what ‘the players want’ would be mistake #1
One aspect of this involves player retention.
Based on the current game alone I suspect a lot of WoW players are actually rather bored and thinking of quitting.
But none of them will actually go ahead and cancel with Fall of the Lich King just in front of them.
Same as last year when there was a long slow summer in WoW with the rather interestingly lo0king Age of Conan being released and Blizz started hyping Death Knights.
They are absolute masters as using hype to keep subscribers where current content alone wouldn’t suffice.
What can they do, really? They need to advertise their product. They also need to test it, and as soon as something is up on the test realms, you can assume it’s been fully data mined and people will be broadcasting Arthas’ death animation all over youtube.
I think they could have not used a title that gave away what was going to happen, but it was never going to be quiet for long. In a way, we all lose, because it would have been exciting to go in with no warning. But that was really never going to happen, whatever Blizzard did (I suppose they could go to great lengths to hide the storyline on the test realms with a fakeout, somehow, but it’s a lot of extra work.)
Let’ separate some parts of your blog entry. The first is the hype created by previews. Blizzard is good at marketing their products, it creates player retention as Stabs mentioned. The other problem is that details of WOTLK were already out long before the NDA was lifted, and not all NDA-breakers could be backtracked and silenced.
There were even webpages dedicated to posting every snippet of information, but Blizzard often contacted major sites and came to agreements to post not every NDA breaking news.
Bottom Line: The preview mentality is not only a Blizzard problem. And it is not as players would not be hungry for news. I was looking forward and preparing for WOTLK the moment first details came up. Some people even re-subscribed to WoW after Cataclysm was announced, to see the old content before it will get replaced…!
I fear we cannot put the blame all on Blizzard here.
But you are right when you say that storytelling and story in WoW suck, that everything is very scripted. We just need to remember how Jeff Kaplan explained breadcrumb quests, how to guide players through quests and all that.
They made this an art, but it is scripted and linear to hell and back. Your influence on the world? Can you decide one way or another? Are there influences on the world depending on your actions?
None, of course. But this is also not only a WoW related problem, even heavily instanced games like Guild Wars do not offer much alternate solutions. If I save the Garden of Seborhin or Rondok Village does not matter, actually.
In LOTRO, there is the dungeon Skûmfil – you can fight as a third party against the mantis-like Gredbyg or against the Deep Claws. But you need to do the dungeon twice anyway for each party, only the final boss changes. Then you may enter the third wing.
In Guild Wars, there is the Bogroot dungeon. There are yellow and red frogmen fighting each other. You can side with one party, the final boss is then different. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Bogroot
I cannot recall any MMO that really lets players make server based choices. I only recall something close to it in Ultima Online, where success or fail to fight back Blackthorne’s minions resulted in the Swamps of Yew either being purified or staying contaminated. But this changed back with the next expansion to a standard status for all shards IIRC.
So yeah, the genre has not really progressed in that matter. Maybe Guild Wars 2 will be the salvation, but I am kinda tired of hoping for the next MMO to make it all better. Star Trek Online brought the holy trinity to space, btw. Tank ships, Healing ships, DPS ships… oh my!
I think Bioware might set a new trend to have some more quality background and storytelling. I think the World of Warcraft would have been even better if it would not have been made from cheese. The story of the Warcraft universe, RTS and RPG, was never great, and the only tries for more involved Thrall in an adventure style game called “Lord of the Clans” that was gutted by Blizzard for various reasons, I dunno what reason they finally put forward for the cancellation.
I think the use of instances and phasing is marking a new trend. The first clumsy attempts of telling a story in a persistant world. Instancing/Phasing is the vehicle we still need for technical reasons and the way our virtual works nowadays, unfortunately.
Think of LOTRO’s skirmishes: They take place in Bree before the Prancing Pony and other players of renown. But they take place in instanced environments. The game is just not able to determine the right amount of challenge for a random amount of players of various levels in the area, like a human GM or DM could do it.
Warhammer’s public quests might be salvaged by Guild Wars and turned into “Events”: Depending on player actions, the bridge will be destroyed by this dragon or not. Rebuild or not. I wonder how they will do it.
I also fear we need to get rid of the loot/profit mentality in MMOs very very soon. We are so much directed by loot carrots in most MMOS right now that it is not funny anymore. But maybe it is not so much the loot lust, but lack of compelling alternatives to do. Besides doing achievements like doing certain things in a very dumb way.
I went to a Games Workshop convention a couple of years ago and took part in the massive Space Marines vs Tyranids game they had going on. Something like 20-30 players, on each side, controlling their own little group of Marines or Tyranids.
In our game the Tyranids got unlimited reinforcements so if the Marines killed a bug it just respawned at the edge of the table at the start of the next turn, whereas dead Marines stayed dead. This rule was in place because at the previous convention the Tyranid side had won their scenario. The Space Marines still managed to defeat the Tyranids (by not being completely over-run), so at the next convention the rules would favor the Marines.
Of course that’s easy to do with a table-top game, not so easy with a static world MMORPG.
Tolkien gave us two volumes with a subplot about this Aragorn guy, his claim to the throne of Gondor, the Stewards not wanting royalty, and Sauron wanting to prevent a king arising to lead the opposition. Then he titled volume 3 “The Return of the King.” Spoiler.
Yes that’s true. But it’s worth mentioning that Tokien’s publisher George Allen & Unwin wanted the epic broken up into 3 books due to it’s massive length. Tolkien himself always wanted the tale to be one book. 🙂
I agree that too much foreshadowing is a problem for MMOs, but as others have said, content roll-out is much too slow to prevent boredom. I think the genre, as a whole, suffers from a bottleneck created by the demands of an MMO community as a whole
Unlike virtually any other game, where devs build a framework, apply a story, and which has a conclusion, MMOs are naturally open-ended. As a result, it’s impossible to develop fast enough to ensure that most of the userbase doesn’t blow through the content before the next development cycle is complete.
Blizzard, and other companies, have always had to implement mechanisms to prevent users from reaching the end before they can roll out new content. When they fail, or when they rush out the product prematurely, boredom or frustration sets in and players leave. What Blizzard continues to do, as others have said, is balance grinds (reputation/money), itemization management via RNG (gear and gear checks), and via foreshadowing content in a timely manner.
Unless companies can shorten their development cycle, it’s almost inevitable that all of these pieces must remain in place, and that spoilers will be necessary to prevent churn. It’s hard to pinpoint why some companies, like CCP, can patch so much more often than Blizzard, but I’m sure it has something to do with the inherent complexity of the game and the tolerance of the user base for change.
In the end, I expect that none of this will change until developers can find a way to either do as you suggest, and introduce dynamism into the MMO model, or somehow find a way to introduce player-generated content into the business model. Either way, the long development cycles are largely to blame for this phenomenon.
Bah, my PC crashed just as I was about to post a huge comment!
In short, I agree with you Wolfshead. When playing Wow I always felt like a bystander, watching events unfold around me rather than partaking in them. I got the feeling that’s the way Blizzard like though.
On another note, I really like EVE Online (and admire the way CCP market it) because in that game the world really is about you and your actions and you’re aren’t just stuck on the side watching events unfold.
Of course that’s the way Blizzard wants it to be. It’s not about our stories, it’s about theirs. We’re just observers/bit players in a supremely static world.
If that’s really a surprise to anyone who has played the game enough to blog about it, well… let’s just say that it’s not going to change any time soon. *shrug*
Despite the fact that MMOs are predicated on a world of adventure and heroism, most people that enter into the realm of virtual worlds for the first time are not made aware of the fact that they will be relegated to bystander/spectator status. It’s something that you slowly begin to realize after you’ve played for a few years after the veil of reality has been lifted.
No matter what you do, you’ll never truly be a hero and you’ll never be able to change the world. Ultimately you mean nothing in the grand scheme of things in today’s mass market MMOs.
I think it’s very useful to blog about this and write about our experiences just as a young adult who leaves behind childhood and the teenage years suddenly realizes the paradigm shift in their life as they enter the workforce and settle down and have a family.
MMOs and virtual worlds are an illusion and a distraction. They have a lot of promise and potential. It’s only after spending a few years testing those boundaries that a person finally realizes the limitations and futility of it all.
Aye, didn’t mean to sound like I was disagreeing with your core assertion. And yes, we should definitely challenge the status quo and write about why we do so. 🙂
I completely agree man! It may be a great game on many accounts, especially since it feeds in to the compulsive gamer in us all, but the fate of every event (save for PvP) in the game is sealed.
Juxtapose that against the open-endedness of games like EvE Online, and you can see what impact a similarly structured game in a fantasy setting would have.
I also wonder sometimes if the MMO-player on average is simply more comfortable with knowing the outcome, instead of forging his own destiny…
The only real affect the players have on the server is how fast they can progress through the storyline. This drove me away from the game some time ago. Pre TBC I did not mind the rigid structure, it was more about playing with friends than anything else. With each patch that came after the release of TBC, though, I found myself less and less motivated to continue to level or enhance my character through raiding or farming items/equipment/gold/reputation. I was doing the same thing I had done when I first started playing, and the end result was virtually the same. The same items, bosses, with new names, colors, etc…
When I left, I felt like the realm I was on was in decline. I didn’t see as many people in the cities, or abroad, and most of the names and pixely faces I’d grown accustom to seeing and grouping with had gone. Even some of the more hardcore lore followers that I had played for so long with were leaving the game, because they knew while the new material would be coming, it would be the same grind, virtually the same visuals, and more reliance on mindless tasks.
If Blizzard stopped announcing future content, people might realize that they are utterly bored of the current content and lose hope of something better on the horizon. Future content advertisements provide the player with the hope of something new, and a feel that the game world is somewhat dynamic.
This is surprisingly similar to the way soap opera’s work. The plot moves very slowly, and at the end of every episode you get a glimpse of what’s to come. Why do soap opera producers do this? Because they realize the plot is irrelevant, it’s the hook that’s important!
This is one of the biggest problems I have with the PTR. Almost every bit of upcoming content is laid out in order to ‘test’ it. The result is that nobody is in the dark about what’s coming next unless they’re living under a rock – even in the trade and general channels in WoW itself people will be discussing what’s in the PTR. There’s no sense of surprise, shock or awe to be found.
Even Ulduar, one of their most impressive instances to date, wasn’t as visually stunning as it should have been to me because I had already stumbled across screenshots of it. I should have been awed at that triumphant instance design, but I just wasn’t.
This also links back into the idea of developer laziness you brought up in your article on immersion. Blizzard is the most successful MMO developer on the planet and they can’t even test their own damn content! And all these previews and screenshots from the PTR mean that you lose one of the feelings that is so key to a game like this – the sense of being an explorer bravely diving into the unknown to face dangers you can’t imagine. That is something I haven’t gotten since leveling up my first few characters and going into my first raid dungeons.