Those of us poor souls who are MMO and virtual world veterans have seen a lot in the past 12 years of the history of this genre. We are no strangers to the philosophical tug of war between world and game. As early MMO travelers and pilgrims, we used to passionately write about it and fiercely debate it. But then we stopped discussing it altogether.
Somewhere in the mid 2000’s, in the public consciousness MMOs crossed the Rubicon and became more game than world. The world became the servant of the game — not the other way around. At about that time an important tipping point was reached that came about unannounced and unheralded: the collective dream of being part of a living, breathing albeit virtual world died.
How did this happen and why?
I Am Not a Gamer
Let me preface this article by saying that I don’t like the term “gamer” and I don’t consider myself a gamer. The gamer moniker never really worked for me. While I always enjoyed RPG type video games, I always thought of myself as something more than just a gamer — especially after MMOs became part of the landscape in 1998.
For me MMOs were more dignified than mere video games. There was something special and unique about being part of a virtual world. A sense of persistence, community, ownership and belonging that games could never offer. In my mind I’ve always thought of myself as a participant, a traveler, an explorer — not a gamer.
Games are mostly about experiencing short-term bursts of enjoyment and fun. On their own, I find games a fleeting and transient form of amusement. While it might be good enough for some, a steady diet of empty calories obtained from amusement is not enough to satiate my hunger.
Besides, games are not a solid enough foundation enough to build a virtual world upon. The reverse is more logical as the world should always come first before the game. Building the roof of a house before laying the foundation makes no sense at all.
The Current Imbalance
But it wasn’t always this way. MMORPGs –yes the “RPG” meant something back then — used to have a healthy balance of game and world. The game aspect of a MMO was something that you experienced within the world. The world itself was more far more important than the mechanics that existed behind the curtain.
Even the players have changed because of the shift from world to game. They’ve lost their appreciation for awe and wonder and instead agonize over talent builds, stats and complex damage equations as MMOs have been reduced to spreadsheets and formulas.
No longer is it enough just to be in a fantastic virtual world where danger and the unknown lurks behind every corner; now everything must be deconstructed to feed the endless hunger of the over achievers.
The Pervasive Nature of Video Games
These days the game is everything and there are legions of teenagers and adults that have grown up submerged in the gamer culture. They have been spoiled by technology. Today’s MMO player was probably weaned on handheld games and graduated to consoles. Like the baby boomers before them, this demographic is a force to be reckoned with. Woe to the developer that doesn’t bow down to the almighty gamer and accommodates their appetites and proclivities.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that most gamers aren’t particularly fond of virtual worlds because they’ve probably never experienced one.
So along came a video game company that decided to capitalize on this new generation and they decided to offer them something very familiar yet packaged as a “world”. The culprit for this change of MMO design philosophy is of course Blizzard and I put the blame squarely upon the shoulders of Rob Pardo the architect of WoW. He is the clever alchemist that decided that MMOs needed to become games to be mainstream and successful.
The Blizzard Smoking Gun
One conclusion that I have come to after years of playing WoW and pondering its success is this: World of Warcraft is not a true MMO, it is really a game artfully disguised as a MMO.
I recall reading an interview a few years ago where one of Pardo’s disciples Jeff Kaplan revealed as much. Given that some MMO bloggers and thinkers are starting to revisit the old debate of world versus game I thought it would be interesting to re-examine this candid interview.
So here’s the tell-tale 2007 interview where Jeff Kaplan admits that WoW was never about making a traditional MMO, instead it was all about exploiting the trappings of a MMO and making a game instead:
The MMO Gamer: This will be our final question. WoW obviously holds an enormous deal of appeal for a great number of people. A good friend of mine’s seventy year old mother, who had never played a game before in her life, until she picked up a copy of WoW, now has a level 70 Druid in a raiding guild. Everyone has their own theories as to the source of where this appeal lays, but what do you, as the lead designer think?
Jeffrey Kaplan: I think the source is the focus on fun. I think a lot of people got carried away with the concept of an MMO from a very high level of community management, or community manipulation, or an MMO as a social experiment. But what we did when we were working on WoW was focus on the fact that it was a game, and if one person played it all by themselves the game should be fun, and not to rely on traditional MMO thoughts of the time, which was forcing people to interact with each other, forcing a slow progression, and being overly punishing on the players. We just wanted to make an experience that was fun whether you wanted to play it by yourself, or with other people.
Make a really deep game, in a really rich world, and then later, focus on, in the later stages of development, how can we make that as accessible as possible through smart user interface choices, and really sort of simple gameplay at first that introduces you to the more complex mechanics the more into the game you want to get.
For anyone that cares about a true virtual fantasy world, this is akin to the moment where Dorothy finds out that the Wizard of Oz is a fraud. What you have here is a rare glimpse into the calculating and shrewd mind of Blizzard. This is the Rosetta Stone of how MMOs have been made ever since. It’s a rather frank admission that WoW is not a virtual world at all but just a game.
For the record, I strongly disagree with just about everything that Kaplan says. Here are a couple of things he said that I’d like to discuss:
MMO Developers Got Carried Away with Community Management?
Let’s take a look at this particular sentence which I find particularly egregious:
Kaplan: I think a lot of people got carried away with the concept of an MMO from a very high level of community management, or community manipulation, or an MMO as a social experiment.
What MMO is he talking about here? He seems to have something against a company that would actually consider the fact that communities of players form within a MMO. As if fostering a community within a MMO is a dubious, wasteful, anti-fun enterprise that must be avoided at all costs.
Blizzard has shown us many times in WoW’s past a complete and total disregard for community. Some examples are: you can avoid every dungeon and solo to the level cap without bothering to form a group. Another example, I’ve seen entire guilds breakup due to inept raid design and progression. Seven years of WoW and there is no real community left, unless you call Trade Chat “community”.
In truth, Blizzard has completely ignored their community, so to have Kaplan casting aspersions against a MMO company that would actually take the notion of community seriously is regrettable. Given this attitude it’s easy to see why Blizzard has never bothered to empower and nurture a good community in WoW. If you don’t even believe in community then why would you even care about having “good” community?
Even his use of the phrase “community manipulation” is absurd. What MMO community was ever manipulated? Is requiring that players group together a form of manipulation? Is raiding manipulation too?
Let’s not forget that this is the former guild leader of one of the most successful and notorious raiding guilds in EverQuest: Legacy of Steel. Without EverQuest and the community on his server he never would have landed that job at Blizzard. How lucky for him that the designers of EverQuest actually created and believed in a virtual world that required that people form cohesive social bonds and communities to overcome shared adversities.
If we want to be honest about manipulation then we need to look directly at Blizzard. Their stock in trade game design mechanic is to manipulate how players experience their game by using rewards. Players will do anything, travel anywhere to get a few more stat bonuses in the form of shiny purple loot. Blizzard are the true masters of Pavlovian manipulation and they have trained their players well.
And let’s not forget how much social devastation Blizzard has caused over the years as many guilds were forced to breakup due to their ever-changing raiding requirements. Just more social engineering courtesy of the non-manipulative folks at Blizzard.
MMOs Got Carried Away as a Social Experiment?
Next up is a real doozy. Kaplan use of the phrase “MMO as a social experiment”. I only wish that he would have had the courage to name names. Let’s ponder this question: what experimental MMOs were out there at the time that anyone had even heard about? This seems to be a direct salvo launched at Raph Koster’s involvement in both Ultima Online and the ill-fated Star Wars Galaxies. These aren’t the MMOs you are looking for Jeff…
This is direct evidence of risk aversion and creative negligence in Blizzard’s design philosophy. Experiments are seen as a waste of time at Blizzard unless of course you love PVP (waves to Tom Chilton) which has undergone years of experimentation and iterations forced on players which cost them millions of dollars of development resources.
It’s a Game Not a World
Here’s the smoking gun quote from Kaplan that proves beyond all shadow of a doubt that a “game” is the heart and soul of WoW:
Kaplan: …what we did when we were working on WoW was focus on the fact that it was a game, and if one person played it all by themselves the game should be fun, and not to rely on traditional MMO thoughts of the time, which was forcing people to interact with each other, forcing a slow progression, and being overly punishing on the players. We just wanted to make an experience that was fun whether you wanted to play it by yourself, or with other people.
This quote from Kaplan really needs no analysis. Everything that I have grown to detest and loathe about WoW has its origins in this kind of mentality. As long as MMOs continue to be made using the tactics in this playbook you will end up with predictability and stagnation.
Given this admission it’s easy to see why WoW appeals to so many people that would never have enjoyed a real virtual world. It’s because being part of a real virtual world takes effort, commitment and involvement whereas a gamer sits down and waits to be entertained with free bread and circuses.
Even as a “game” today’s WoW woefully misses the mark with its 85 levels of challenge free tutorials that would put a modern school child to sleep. It’s hardly the “deep” game as Kaplan claims.
What ever happened to their mantra “easy to learn, hard to master”? Look guys, by level 5 I learned how to play your game, why are you torturing me with 80 more levels of spoon fed pabulum? Why do you wait so long to introduce any semblance of challenge to your players?
Conclusion
When I think back of when WoW started, I recall how many veteran MMO players were seduced by Blizzard’s clever bait and switch scheme. Entire guilds transferred over from EQ to WoW. Since it looked and felt like a virtual world, we thought it *was* a virtual world. We mistakenly saw WoW as the natural successor to EverQuest. Since some of the high-ranking dev team were EQ players, we trusted them and figured that they were trying to make a better version of EQ. I think we naïvely projected our hopes onto WoW when in reality it was something completely different: a game dressed up with all the trappings of a virtual world.
Unearthing the root of Blizzard’s design philosophy gives us more clarity in understanding why they do what they do and even more importantly what they won’t do i.e. player housing. Admittedly, they created a unique product that leveraged elements from different genres and created something original in WoW but it was always lacking depth and meaning.
So here we are today in 2011. The average WoW player is probably unaware of the virtual world deficit inherent WoW. For many of them, WoW is their first MMO and that is all they know. Ignorance is bliss and that’s a shame because WoW could be a far better MMO if Blizzard were to shift some of their resources to non-achievement community focused content development.
But in the end, WoW is just a game and nothing more. WoW will never be a great because greatness was never its goal. There’s a big difference between wanting to achieve greatness and wanting to be popular.
It’s also far less of a philosophical burden and much easier to make a video game than it is a virtual world. Anything and everything can be excused because after all “it’s just a game…”.
Games have a utilitarian sensibility shielding them while virtual worlds are seen as pretentious experimentation or social engineering. After all, games are for real men and virtual worlds are for Renaissance faire sissies. This is the lie that the achievement obsessed raiding culture and the armchair alpha males who dominate the Elitist Jerks and the Fires of Heaven forums — would have you believe.
Let’s be honest, if Leonardo Da Vinci or J.R.R. Tolkien were alive today and applied for a job at Blizzard they would be turned away. While Blizzard claims to be hiring artists and designers what they really want are more accountants and statisticians that will help them make more money — not visionaries or world builders that will help them build a better world. To be frank, I don’t believe the people at Blizzard have the intellectual, spiritual and creative wherewithal to even fathom the creation of a real virtual world. It’s just too deep a concept for them to wrap their minds around. They are better left doing what they do best: creating video games for the masses.
-Wolfshead
There’s a good chance you’re right. The “Gameplay first” mantra is certainly in line with your analysis, as is the “concentrated coolness” one. However, moving too much away from the “world”, the simulation aspect, might not at all be good for WoW’s sub numbers, either.
After all they grew 6mio in the first year, then 2mio per year for the next 3 years and then they released TBC and haven’t grown a single million since then. With Cataclysm they even had to admit the first fall in sub numbers and since, for gameplay reasons (!), I am honestly unable to enjoy they beyond-trivial leveling GAME(!) nowadays, I don’t think they will ever grow again – let alone have more than 12 mio players.
*** “then they released WotLK” and haven’t grown a single million since then.
—
I need an edit button ..
Very interesting article and one that I agree with completely.
For me it became painfully obvious that WoW was not a virtual world when the whole phasing thing came up. It was supposed to be a tool to “flesh out” a changing/dynamic environment but it made you feel even more isolated. From WotLK and beyond, WoW levelling is a strictly single player game, one that could easily be played offline as well.
Things went worse when phasing was even heavier in Cataclysm, by essentially
(a) making group playa buggy experience,
(b) further removing you from your peers through layers upon layers of phases and
(c) putting you on rails with exactly zero devations.
The MMO target group nowadays: millions of non-MMO-players. But Nils mentioned it, McMMO has gone too far and some of the people they lost crave for more.
If SWTOR copies early WoW, it will get them. If it copies WoW today, oh well. But in any case I see little hope that anyone has the balls to try creating a virtual world. An arduous and ambitious task full of danger of failure, no wonder no major company dares it anymore.
Regarding Chilton and PvP, since the time of UO: Age of Shadows I wonder what his idea of PvP actually is. There was emergent pvp in Hillsbrad and Tarren Mill, but apparently it was not good enough for him so instanced battlegroups got invented. Then they tried Wintergrasp and I dunno what was wrong with it but it had to get instanced and controlled by the Blizzard pvp gods as well. Best PvP I had in WotLK was between the Wintergrasp matches fighting for ore nodes.
But well, there are 11 millions or so that are still happy to pay for WoW, and that is what counts. 🙁
The problem with Wintergrasp was if you had too many people in a small area fighting, it overloaded the server, to the point of crashing in some cases. This algorithmic limitation is what really prevents WoW from having any kind of large scale battle, like an actual war would.
I think you’re right but what disappoints me is not that WoW is a game but it’s become a game with less appeal.
I never cared too much about the lore or what was on top of that mountain over there. Instant quest text was an instant delight. I like numbers and calculation and exploring by calculating. I also like teamplay and simply the feeling that my actions affect other people even if it’s ganking or auction house undercutting.
WoW has moved on from a game full of surprises with lots to figure out to a game of grinding mobs that couldn’t kill you if you went afk for 5 minutes and raids that are essentially fruit machines. Left, right 3 watermelons, jackpot! A popular game but a changed game from hunting and being hunted by other leveling characters in Stranglethorn Vale or trying to figure out how to kite with a Hunter.
I think people can approach MMOs in very different ways. I’m playing Eve today which is considered one of the more worldly of virtual world games but to my mind it’s very much a game, I’m trying to make my numbers bigger and I’m trying to fox other people. It could be poker.
I’m curious to know – if WoW isn’t really an MMO, which of the big “MMOs” actually is, in your eyes?
It took me a while to put a name on the issue of gamification in MMOs; frankly because I had never used the term in the past myself because I never needed it. but like you say here, there’s a huge difference between classic games and MMOs and some of the virtues of the first are the doom of the second. MMOs are a lot more than just games or at least they should be.
I’ve wondered about the artistic freedom of WoW’s lead designers myself in a recent article I’ve written – I wonder if they are happy with how things are (or like you say, are not capable of anything different anyway) in today’s WoW, or whether they don’t feel like birds in a golden cage that has been taken over by men in grey suits…. somehow I’d like to believe that the guys who created such a beautiful place as Azeroth still have that ‘soul’ and wish to create real worlds because artists will be artists. but what do I know about the power of big money.
“While Blizzard claims to be hiring artists and designers what they really want are more accountants and statisticians that will help them make more money — not visionaries or world builders that will help them build a better world.”
I dunno. Blizzard doubled down on “MMO as a game and not a world” with Cataclysm and it’s cost them dearly despite the fact that WoW has never been more accessible to the solo and/or casual player. Additionally, the people who created WoW are not the ones running it – we’ve discussed the “B” team to death already as a community.
EvE was mentioned in another post. EvE is the best (in my opinion) MMO-as-a-world type of game and continues to grow despite being almost ten years old (older than WoW, actually) and having some of the most hardcore PvP in the genre.
This contrast leads me to believe Blizzard’s new MMO will play more like EvE than WoW – one server, no fixed group sizes, mostly lateral progression that encourages old and new players to play together, freeform gameplay where every character is unique in history, appearance, and specializations, etc.
The DIKU/EQ model has been taken as far as it can logically go and then some, and Blizzard would have to be fools not realize it. Their new MMO could, and should, do for the sandbox side of the genre what WoW did for the themepark aspect. If they don’t someone else will – every major MMO for the last several years has sold zillions of boxes because people want something new, not reskinned WoW.
“every major MMO for the last several years has sold zillions of boxes because people want something new, not reskinned WoW.”
Wait, whut? I’ve seen far more people complaining that most major MMOs really *are* just reskinned WoW, *especially* those that sell well.
SWTOR looks to be banking on that, too.
That’s his point isn’t it? People are willing to buy into the hype of new MMOs, hoping that it’s a fresh world to explore. When it becomes obvious it is a WoW-reskin with hand-holdy content on rails, they are dissapointed. And pin their hopes on the next big thing.
It’s starting to become the norm for this market.
Might be what he’s angling at, but maybe I’m not reading correctly.
…but yes, that’s a commonality in the market, and it’s not really healthy.
I somehow can’t fathom Blizzard making a “sandbox” mmo. I could write an essay on why, but in short I do not believe with thier corporate structure and past history that they have the talent and innovative thought processes to create a world that the content is created by the players.
I think you would see a sandbox world with arena’s and battlegrounds and instances and raids and the player run ideas are to funnel them into the series of BG’s/arena’s and raids etc etc ad naseum. Don’t forget the cash shop. That will be there day one as well on top of a sub. Add in accessability, lowest common denominator type gameplay, non existant death penalties, yeah just utter fail.
The skinner box has made them rich and I do not believe creating a new IP with NEW ideas outside the gear treadmill appeals to the bean counters.
At the end of the day with Activision attached to them in ANY form and that reject Ghostscrub working there means an automatic pass on anything new they release. Yes D3 as well – I can just smell the monetization and streamlining of D3 already.
I have mixed feeling about this article. To say that players are not gamers would be absurd. I’m sorry Wolf, I normally love everything you say because you remind me of me (**No bullshit**) but FFS, the real world is a world, the game is a game, the two coincide to do one thing, occupy people from either having to remember their crap lives or remind them that real life has a reward (you get to play the game). I don’t see how pulling out the “I’m older than you and hada a different experience” card gives anyone the right to infringe on an-others enjoyment.
The idea that people from years ago had a different version of “how the story should have gone” doesn’t make it any more than another opinion. The GAMING industry doesn’t follow the standards of the PnP player, they don’t care about the 1000 people that they pissed off to make a game that 100’s of thousands (an eventually millions in the case of Blizzard) loved and spent money on religiously to play. (Not to mention you yourself supported this trend by paying subs.)
Blizzard “entertainment” is a company that develops entertainment, nothing more. If anyone was entertained with EQ and thought that WoW was a colossal failure, they either canceled the sub and said “oh well a few wasted bucks…” or kept playing hoping for something that evidently after years of providing entertainment and paying subs never came. World of Warcraft didn’t create the genre, it just sold it better.
Question: Do I agree with the way MMO’s went after my years of pen and paper, and years of MTG (it played a role too)?
Answer: It doesn’t matter, we are where we are, and changing it now is irrelevant. Creating an MMO that no one would understand because there is a degree of normalizations would be taking 10 steps back to take 5 to the side. It would have been cool if submersion in the “world” had grown better, but it didn’t and it probably won’t because as you said the generations have changed and we are the dinosaurs living in the new digital age.
-Vudu
It’s amazing to me how much you tried to squeeze from that single answer. Both WoW and EQ are games; that Blizzard decided their game shouldn’t be as “punishing” as EQ is not revelatory.
Ironically, to a degree he actually agreed with you.
You: “Besides, games are not a solid enough foundation enough to build a virtual world upon. The reverse is more logical as the world should always come first before the game. Building the roof of a house before laying the foundation makes no sense at all.”
Him: “Make a really deep game, in a really rich world, and then later, focus on, in the later stages of development, how can we make that as accessible as possible through smart user interface choices, and really sort of simple gameplay at first that introduces you to the more complex mechanics the more into the game you want to get.”
I prefer that the games I play are both great worlds and great games. The latter thing is important, and perhaps Blizzard’s main strength. A Blizzard employee talking about the importance of gameplay, of not asking players to jump all these hurdles in order to get anywhere, can only possibly seem like a “smoking gun” if you’re overly invested in this particular narrative – and, clearly, that’s the lens through which you look at these things.
EQ, UO, all these games came out within a small window of time around a decade ago. That’s an incredibly small pool of MMOs. WoW itself is the better part of a decade old; it was made by a group of talented developers who were inspired by EQ but had a different vision for how an MMO should be played. I don’t know how you can loathe them for that, or for the fact that Blizzard hasn’t yet used an MMO released in 2004 for the purpose of revolutionizing the genre. MMOs were inevitably going to begin diverging from the model that initially drew you into them, and they’re also inevitably going to begin diverging from the WoW model over time.
I wonder: do you see the potential for games like GW2, TSW, etc. to bring back that sense of wonder for you? Or has your initial love for MMOs transformed into this intellectual exercise, where you find talking about them more interesting than playing them? Do you have the temperament to replicate the feelings you felt when you played your first MMOs still?
A second comment doesn’t help, but …
… my sincere apologies for the length of my above comment. I didn’t notice. 😮
Two things I would like to say about this.
First, you had me at, “In my mind I’ve always thought of myself as a participant, a traveler, an explorer — not a gamer.” This article and the other one you recently wrote, Reflections on Blizzard Losing 600,000 WoW Subscribers, are both excellent in substance. As a fellow veteran MMORPG player of about eleven years, now, I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis and conclusions.
Second, with all due respect, you really, really need an editor, or maybe it’s time to consider typing your articles in Word or some similar application with a good spelling check / grammar check function, and then copying and pasting it into your WordPress client. I would be happy to proof your articles, if you would like. I’m not trying to be snarky or condescending. I just think that your ideas are too brilliant to be tarnished by superficial flaws… like leaving out the occasional word.
Let me know if you’d like to collaborate. I usually write on Current Events and issues related to Economic Analysis of Law, but I occasionally dip my toe into Entertainment waters. When I have time for it, I still enjoy some aspects of WoW, but that’s only because there is a small but fervent community of roleplayers on my realm that are holding on by their fingernails, and I like being a part of that.
Keep up the good work. Your ideas and writing really resonate with me, and I often share your articles with my MMORPG-playing friends.
Thanks for the kind comments Noel.
For the record, I do proof my articles in MS Word and I use a WordPress plugin called “After the Deadline”. I re-read this article and I only found one error but I’m sure there are more– my articles tend to “grow in the telling of the tale” so they can be rather long. I agree, I do need an editor though. Sadly blogging doesn’t pay well but I might take you up on your offer. 🙂
Sure thing, my friend. Keep those articles coming. I earned a 3-day World of Warcraft forums ban for writing an insightful post on the General Discussion forums that mentioned a few of your articles here as citations / support for my analysis in that post. The thread was deleted a few times, but I’d written it in MS Word, first. So, I just reposted it until they banned me. It was worth it.
This is exactly why I’ve shifted my research away from how to build a better MMO game to how to build a better social interactive experience online. In effect, look at how Flickr was born. They were trying to make a social “game” but they ended up making an image-based social interactive online system. That’s because they saw beyond the “game” and realized the elements of it could potentially be utilized in more meaningful ways.
So yes, life is a game. That’s why if you created the “perfect MMO game”, I’d guarantee you that many of the elements within it would probably be quite usable within a social interactive system that would allow people to collaborate online in innovative new ways.
Actually I kind of hinted at this before with Blizzard’s Titan and some strange things that the developer’s said about it. In effect, I’m wondering if the by product of the game development is that they’ve figured out how to collaborate online in enjoyable new ways (i.e. almost game-like social interaction).
I’m pretty sure Facebook has some sort of intellectual property patent on this. Real life gaming essentially is facebooking.
I thought of something that I wanted to add to the conversation regarding this topic. I find it interesting that a company like Blizzard is really making no effort to hide the game aspect of their MMO.
There’s a concept in live theater called the “4th wall” which is an imaginary line that separates the actors from the spectators. When an actor starts addressing the audience he/she is breaking the rule of the 4th wall and eroding the suspension of disbelief.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall
Suspension of disbelief plays a huge part of MMOs — at least initially but eventually a sense of familiarity takes over — that’s another topic for another day.
Yet Blizzard cavalierly dispenses with the 4th wall and allows mods like “Playerscore” where the players themselves are openly more concerned about the mechanics and “under the hood” workings of MMOs than actually taking in the world as it was supposed to be enjoyed.
There’s a prime example of this in Trion’s RIFT where I now see vendors in every town and city that have “PVP Vendor” as their in-game description. The phrase “PVP” should never ever be seen or uttered in a virtual world because it destroys the immersion. No vendor would never call himself a PVP vendor. It is absurd.
On the other hand, some people really like characters like Deadpool… but he’s more witty about breaking that wall. On the whole, breaking the fourth wall is a risky thing, and yes, it’s done far too often with far too little care.
The best MMO blog post I’ve read in a while.
Not much to say really other than, spot on! I remember walking into the East commons for the first time in EQ and thinking “wow this is massive”, moving through the world feeling I was part of something.
Now although I do enjoy games like Rift my current main MMO, I do feel like going through the motions more. At the moment it’s achievements in Rift that get me the closest to feeling part of a world as it makes me explore and find things I wouldn’t otherwise see.
It doesn’t compare to my EQ days however. I had hopes Vanguard would be the game that brought the world back, but that failed to happen.
Another great post Wolfshead and I couldn’t agree more.
I think Blizzard was lucky with WoW I never liked WoW and I’ve never thought it was a good game. The reason why I played it is the fact that all my non-gaming friends did and every time I meet them they beg me to play it. I stopped before The Burning Crusade and since that time every time I meet them they try to convince me to come back and play WoW.
The #1 reason of WoW’s success is the lack of a good competitor. The #2 reason of WoW’s success is accessibility because it didn’t require a good PC to run it. All its competitors were heavy on your computer (EverQuest 2). So, when friends sit and want to decide on what game, they are stuck with WoW because Joe’s PC cannot run anything else. WoW was the only decent MMORPG for them to play unless they were planning to bail on Joe.
The #3 reason of why WoW was successful is the gamification of the genre which opened it to the mainstream audience, an audience that were not even interested in games to begin with.
We’re all tired of all this even people at Fires of Heaven forums are complaining about the current MMORPG approach. Look at MMORPG.com forums and boy they are tired of this crap. A lot of people are waiting for a unique experience living in a virtual world and the last thing I want to hear about is another quest driven, gamish MMORPG.
I think Vanilla WoW was truly an MMO, but like you said Blizzard had pulled a bait and switch, and with Cataclysm it is more a game than an MMO.
I’m sure the devlopers had the best intentions and wanted to create a virtual world, and something new, but Blizzard is trapped by it’s own success, and greed. What’s the saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
I’m one of those people you mention in your article, a gamer who’s first mmo was wow. I played from Vanilla to Cataclysm with breaks in-between. I agree with a lot of what you are saying but I think it’s important to mention wow’s unprecedented success means they delivered something millions of people enjoyed so much they were willing to play and pay for it for years. Is it a game? Is it a world? I think it borrows elements from both but in the end however much you try to define it and stereotype the people who enjoy playing it; it’s a place people like playing in.
I suppose it’s a bit like Cheers. It a familiar place people go to relax in where everyone (well everyone in yor guild and friends list) knows your name.
You say players do not realise they are not in a proper virtual world and do not know what they are missing but we do. The first time I stepped outside the Druid start zone I had a quest to turn a demon into a frog which I completed. Moments later the demon was back, reset for the next player. My heart sank and I felt disappointment. I soon realise my interactions in this ‘world’ would not always affect the environment or the characters I met along the way but I compromised because I was enjoying it so much. This is the reason ‘endgame’ raiding is the least enjoyable aspect of MMO’s for me, when for some it’s the only reason they play. Grinding the same instances/bosses over and over just for epic loot seems inadequate, especially if completing the dungeon does not affect the world in any way. Similarly if I fail to stop this boss, why are there no consequences?
So wow for me became a place where I explored new content (zones), completing quests while chatting to friends and taking part in some pvp and a bit of raiding – It became a place I liked to play in. It was predictable, safe, comforting.
The zombie event pre-Wrath of the Litch King was the best event ever and a major wake-up call for me; even if its full effect was accidental. For the first time this place was not predictable and Player Versus Environment was dangerous! I said then this is the future of MMO’s and my current MMO, Rift, has taken some of these elements to heart. Rifts, invasions, public groups, world events, achievements which encourage exploration – these elements make it feel more like a world with consequences but even then Rift is basically wow 2. Still I am enjoying it immensely and maybe because it is like a more refined and evolved version of wow.
I think it is also worth pointing out vanilla wow did have a lot of the community aspects you say are missing, but that was because progression, raiding and pvp was so hardcore and there was no linked realms so it forced a communal sprit but because it was forced it left a bit of a sour taste.
I get the feeling mmo’s are going to evolve to feel more like virtual worlds but wow’s success is never going to turn the clock back 10 years and develop the MMO’s you think you are yearning for.
IMHO, I would have to say that it really was not “World” immersion for any game within the last decade; It was “Character” immersion.
The world effect that any player ever really had in the game was with the other players in the world. The “camp” system that the players introduced 10 years ago was not a part of the world, it was part of the player community. When something died, it would rematerialize out of virtual thin air. Large boss type creatures also operated the same way. ” Oh boy, Nagafen is back. Contact the kill crew, we gots a lizard to evict!” This is nowhere near any REAL association because it was all experience and loot despensers and the community had to devise a way to be civil with one another.
The world and the rules of the world forced the players to follow a self contrived etiquite at which other players would follow or be punished by the players themselves. Looking back, all of the things we enjoyed about the massively multiplayer online experience were not coded by the developers at all. There were baseline rules for community interaction like no swearing, but the more intricate items we experienced were solely governed by the playerbase.
Going forward in history, all I can really observe is new developments created by the developer outside of the hands of the player to handle play time issues. Instances to eliminate the camping problem, group tools to assist in getting into a dungeon quickly to cut down on the downtime it would take to travel and find a place to be, the ability to be able to curb stomp any boss without competition except for being world first, or even a system that would allow you to post up your wares instead of hotkey spamming a zone to allow for more adventuring by the player. The development of these types of system created the butterfly effect we see today such as a player base that is lacking in group skills to be effective, the reduced interaction with other players in your day to day activites in the world like selling, or even the skills to assemble 5+ players to pillage an instance of any size or difficulty.
The current systems put into place have only socialized the community to complain rather than to govern itself in the world it is provided.
I would have to say the real arguement is not world/game balance, it would have to be game/player balance when dealing with the large volumes of subscribers in one virtual space. Again, this is just IMHO
I have to agree with pretty much all of this article.
I am an old-school PnP gamer, of course, and did the MUD, MUSH, etc thing in the 90’s. I went further away from MUD and more towards MUSH because I like to create and tell stories more than hack n’ slash.
UO came out, and I gleefully discovered that I could do both, and with graphics. Yay! I loved it. I got into the RP community there, as well as DAoC, SWG (before it was pooched), and more.
Being an aspiring novelist (first should be published this time next year, already writing the rough for the third), I love to create worlds. I love to PARTICIPATE in worlds. A game like UO or SWG offered precisely that… Sure, there was a game, and combat, and goodies, but there was a WORLD there!
Am I the only person in the gaming community that wants to roll a frikkin farmer? Or a merchant? The “OMG-gotta-get-there-get-in-kill-the-boss-get-out-collect-reward-NEXT!” motif in most games is unappealing to me, and always has been. I was bummed when I discovered that on Pirates of the Burning Sea, you couldn’t walk around on the deck of your ship, or go below deck, etc., and that the ships sail outrageously quickly. It’s a pirate game, but you can’t STAND on your frikkin SHIP!
In PnP, the rules and combat system are the support for the WORLD and the STORY! We have the technology to create a world, supported by story, but we don’t do it. The closest we ever got were games like UO and SWG, the “sandbox” types, but even they were not what they could have been in this area.
I would love to see someone reinvent MMORPGs, and actually put the “RPG” in there. We have all the tools we need.
Here’s a posting from today’s Gamasutra concerning Chris Metzen’s take on story:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/37778/GDC_Online_Blizzard_Creative_Boss_Calls_Writers_Keepers_Of_The_Flame.php
The key in that public relations tidbit is: “For Blizzard, ultimately it’s the gameplay that comes first – even before story. ‘If you don’t make it fun in the first three minutes, you’ve failed,’ Metzen said. ‘Accessibility in gameplay must come first.'”
Basically, he’s saying the game is paramount. What you’re playing, the story you’re engaged in, how you are playing etc is meaningless.
It’s putting the cart before the horse, imho. You need SUBSTANCE before anything else… ‘cept at Blizzard. I’ve officially hung ‘Blizzard’ next to ‘Zanga’ on my list of devs who care merely about the ends, forgetting, ignoring, bastardizing, the MEANS.
“After all, games are for real men and virtual worlds are for Renaissance faire sissies.”
I guess that makes me a sissy then as I tend to explore every place I can in a MMO.
That was my biggest disappointment when beta testing Rift, how small the world seemed of the beaten path.
correction: off the beaten path.