The past paradoxically becomes clearer as time passes. Trends are very hard to pinpoint and define while they are incubating and growing. When you are personally experiencing a cultural movement you don’t have the time or inclination to understand the implications of what you are doing. You are there and it feels right.
We humans love to jump on bandwagons. We are prone to getting caught up in the moment. We see this with political candidates, the latest technology and we see this with video games and MMOs. During those periods of reckless abandon rarely do we ever stop to consider the implications of our actions. We live for the moment.
I believe enough time has passed since 1998 that it’s time to take stock of what MMOs have become and how their design has affected what we have become as players. There’s a saying “You are what you eat”. I believe this is also true of MMOs, you are what you play. What you do and where you travel has a profound effect on who you become. This explains why most of us who came to fantasy worlds to answer the call of adventure ended up being actors.
Inconvenient Questions
I have a history of being a thorn in the side of the MMO establishment. A famous person once said: “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” Anyone that challenges the status quo has an uphill battle.
Lately, I’ve started to notice that many players and commentators are finally starting to come around and are agreeing with things I’ve been saying for years regarding the woeful state of affairs with the MMO industry. I smile when I read top commentators and MMO celebrities coming to the same conclusions I made years ago. Vindication is a dish best served cold.
So, I’d like to start by asking some rather inconvenient, uncomfortable and existential questions about the MMO genre, the people who play them and the people who make them:
Given the repetitive nature of MMOs and the apparent lack of choice and innovation, why do people continue to be drawn to MMOs as a leisure time activity?
Do developers and player even care about the concept of player freedom and self-determination or is experiencing “fun” by any means possible the ultimate goal of this genre?
Do people still want to be part of virtual worlds or are they more interested in playing an online game?
Have we as players lost the will and courage to embark on adventures that might require exploring the vast reaches of the geographic unknown?
Or have we become creatures of convenience, comfort and safety deathly afraid of our own virtual shadows and loathe to risk even the slightest ounce of our energy and time?
The Road Not Taken
As I struggled with these questions, I remembered an insightful poem I had heard in my teen years by Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken.
I have a certain affection for this poem. Growing up I was a shy awkward overweight kid, I really didn’t fit in with any group. Nerds and gamers didn’t exist as social groups back then. We were all alone.
I had few friends and I submerged myself and retreated into music, fantasy literature, pulp horror magazines and even the writings of Ayn Rand. All I had was my identity as an individual. So art and poems that promoted individualism like The Road Not Taken, really resonated with me.
While writing this article, it struck me that this poem is the perfect analogy that might help explain what has happened to this once noble genre and why two roads have emerged from a single path.
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Could it be that we MMO players are that traveler in the poem? Will we someday regret we didn’t take the road less traveled?
The Fork in the Road
We play MMOs for various reasons: escapism, relaxation, challenge, achievement, hanging out with our friends — all in the name of adventure — at least that is how fantasy worlds are marketed. The once rare opportunity to be a part of a living and breathing fantasy world together with people from all around the world used to be an irresistible proposal.
The problem is when you get there, more often that not, the hype does not match the user experience and like a person that books a hotel from an internet website they often feel let down. From Azeroth to Middle-earth to the next big MMO this feeling of disappointment almost always comes back to haunt us. Once the lofty virtual world promises are forgotten and forgiven we seem resigned to being herded like cattle into theme parks.
An Unlikely Pair of Travelers: Actors and Adventurers
One day, it finally dawned on my that the MMO experience can distilled into two main categories and they are mirrored by two real life examples: actors and adventurers.
Each of these categories are easy to understand metaphors for how players experience and interact within the virtual worlds that have been created for them. But more importantly, each represents a different path: one a road well traveled and the other a road less traveled.
The MMO Actor
Consider the actor. In the real world, an actor is someone who plays a part created by someone else. While the actor can reinterpret someone’s script and occasionally improvise, he is ultimately subservient to story/play/film that is created by the author/playwright/director. The actor is on the Orient Express train with fellow actors; there can be no leaving the tracks and only one destination — the end of the story.
Sound familiar?
Actors and Adventurers MMO Style
In the MMO world dominated by quest-centric game play and story-driven narratives the player has become a stage actor playing a part that is created by a game designer. There is very little room for deviation. In order to advance the story you must enter the castle and rescue the princess in order to be proclaimed the hero. Although the player can refuse to complete a quest — very few actually do — completing all available quests is how the MMO game is intended to be played. So we do as we are told.
So the MMO player is really just an actor going through the motions, reading the script, performing all required tasks on cue. This is not to be confused with role-playing where the person actually creates and invents role and actively nurtures and develops a persona and interacts with other role-players using the virtual world as contextual and situational backdrop.
What is the Benefit of Being an Actor?
What is the payoff for the player that decides to be an MMO actor? This is indeed a fundamental question because surely the player knows that thousands of players before him and after him will play the exact same role.
Why then do players willingly suspend their disbelief and participate in this simplistic and repetitive song and dance?
There is nothing special or exclusive about playing a typical MMO these days. Maybe this explains why people dress up in various real life uniforms like goths, emo kids, hip hop, nerds, jocks and whatever the latest fad happens to be. Being a unique individual takes courage and guts. Maybe this explains why MMOs are so popular: players don’t have to think or display any creativity — they just follow the yellow exclamation mark signposts on the yellow brick road like everyone else.
Perhaps the answer is this: most people are just too lazy to be creative and to forge their own adventures. In an age of short attention spans, players want their hero experience handed to them like grabbing a plate of sushi from a conveyor belt.
Even more puzzling considering how much the game element of MMOs have taken over as a design sensibility and given the inherent limitations of the MMO actor, there is no incentive nor opportunity to play the part well. Going through the motions produces a bland form of victory. The only way to be a better questor is to complete them faster hence the current “DPS” meta game that so many players have been seduced by (and a common pitfall that many novice MMO bloggers fall into).
The Real World Actor
To get some additional perspective on this issue, maybe it’s useful to look at actors in the real world. Why do actors in real life pursue careers as actors? What kind of person finds fulfillment in being somebody else?
Perhaps acting allows actors to escape from their true personae free from the drudgery and responsibilities of everyday life. They can say and do things that they might not be free to do in the real world such as playing villains or heroes. And it’s all make believe; a game of pretend that is over after the curtain falls.
The MMO Actor
The MMO player shares a similar reality in that they can log off at anytime and resume their lives of comfort and safety back in the real world.
Another thing worth considering is that actors don’t have to think about what they are going to say — all that is done for them by the writers. As far as MMO players, they don’t have to say anything. They just press accept or decline but the story progresses along despite the lack or surplus of eloquence.
So let’s sum up, what it means to be a MMO actor:
- You have no real freedom and enjoy limited autonomy as you are playing a part and must follow a script written by a quest designer
- You must complete the quest or lose out on character progression and the revelation of the storyline
- There is no reward for being a good actor nor penalty for being a bad actor — just show up!
- Your moral alignment is fixed as you are always the hero (or villain) because the quest designer says so
- You must have an endless capacity to be able to suspend your disbelief knowing that thousands if not millions of fellow actors will have played and be playing the same role
- Predictability
- When the scripts dry up, you have nothing to do and feel a lack of purpose and direction
Still want to be an MMO actor?
The MMO Adventurer
In the real world there are a few equivalents to the MMO adventurer; they are those that join the military and mercenary organizations and others that love to explore the wilderness such as hikers and campers. In both cases, the unexpected is to be expected.
The ability to think quickly, adapt and process whatever challenges comes one’s way is paramount for survival. This helps to explain the oft used phrase “the thrill of adventure”. This goes for Navy Seals and mountain climbers alike . Both have objectives but there are elements of chance and variability that are far removed from the actor that plies her craft on stage or in a virtual world.
The Virtual Sandbox
The MMO adventurer best thrives in what is called a “sandbox”. In the real world, a child’s sandbox is a place where children can explore and create their own fun. No instruction manual is needed. Have you ever noticed toddlers on Christmas morning playing with worthless balls of tin foil or wrapping paper instead of playing with the expensive toys inside?
The sandbox a useful metaphor for the player that like to create his own self-directed experience. He doesn’t need a script. He doesn’t need a map. He doesn’t need yellow exclamation marks that act as breadcrumbs guiding his every virtual step. In a properly designed sandbox virtual world, every experience is fresh and unique.
Learn Your Lines, Rehearse the Script and Win
But the problem is that those MMOs aren’t being made anymore by any AAA development studio. So the hapless MMO adventurer has no choice but to be trapped in a MMO that is akin to the movie Groundhog Day and is subject to repetitive insanity where everything is scripted and nothing changes. Learn your lines (read: learn NPC and boss A.I.) you will be rewarded.
Eventually MMO adventurers become frustrated because they can’t fulfill their virtual aspirations and they leave. What is left is a self-fulfilling prophecy of virtual worlds dominated by well trained MMO actors.
So let’s sum up what it means to be a MMO adventurer:
- You act and think for yourself and develop independence and autonomy — there are no lines or quests telling you where to go and what you must do
- You develop and nurture a survival mindset that rewards quick thinking, self-reliance, resourcefulness and cooperation — you become a better player
- Unpredictability
- Every day has the potential for new and endless challenges because what you experience is not finite like scripted content
In Defense of the Adventurer
If you haven’t already guessed, I greatly favor the MMO adventurer over the MMO actor. When I got involved with MMOs in 1998, I was lured by fantastic, exotic worlds of mystery and danger. I enlisted in the MMO genre because I craved adventure and danger — yes all from the comfort of my home — that was the lure and magic of virtual worlds. I didn’t sign up to be an actor reading someone else’s script.
For me J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary explanation of the seductive power of wanderlust from the Lord of the Rings is apt:
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to.”
Bilbo’s wise words sum up what it means to be an adventurer. It’s a pity that that spirit of adventure has vanished from virtual worlds and a lost generation of MMO players will never taste its sweet fruits.
Conclusion
So what happened?
I truly believe that MMO design has become perverted and misguided since the rise of MMOs like World of Warcraft. The once good and noble soul of MMOs has been possessed by a spirit of sloth, gluttony and greed — we’ve been bewitched by game design elements that appeal to the worst traits in humanity. The MMO genre has lost its way and the current Blizzard design zeitgeist has ensnared millions of players in its foul web.
I believe good intentioned MMO developers have taken far too many liberties and in the process the adventure player has become all but extinct. These days the MMO adventurer has precious few places she can call home and battlefields where she can prove her valor. The sole responsibility of MMO designers is to create the backdrop and the setting for adventure to explore and conquer. Nothing less and nothing more. Instead they continue to meddle in your virtual life and seek to control every aspect of your online experience.
I have an alternative vision: MMOs should be proving grounds where players can distinguish themselves by testing their mettle against the environment and other players. Instead MMOs are created in sausage factories and are nothing more than amusement park rides with long lines waiting to be entertained by the courage and bravery of NPCs supported by hollow words uttered by voice over actors in cut-scenes.
The real question is: why can’t we have MMOs that appeal to both kinds of players? Where are the viable choices out there? The reality is that to survive, businesses need to make money. So they must mitigate investor risk and the result is that MMO development companies are playing it safe. Combine that with the exorbitant $50-$100 million dollar cost and you have the reason the MMO industry is currently besieged with WoW clones and cleverly disguised replicas with different skins — Lord of the Rings Online and RIFT come to mind.
When the consumer has little to no choice they are at the mercy of a financial and creative hegemony. What you want as a MMO consumer has little to do with your actual wants and needs. There are very few games in town and if you want to play it must be by their rules. You are in their world now.
I originally wanted to close this article with this question: Do you want to be: an actor or adventurer? It then dawned on me that that choice really doesn’t exist anymore. At least in the poem by Robert Frost, the traveler has an real choice in front of him. Unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of that choice anymore. The road less traveled has vanished into the mists of MMO history and all that remains is a super highway that leads to the mundane and mediocre.
I have been told by various posters that they have not been able to leave comments. I apologize for this. Somehow a setting in one of my WordPress plugins called WP-SpamFree was causing the problem. I have no idea how this happened but hopefully this has been fixed.
I do appreciate the fact that people made the effort to post here and then to have their post rejected is unfortunate. I apologize for the inconvenience.
-Wolfshead
comments broken? /ragequit!=)
As alluded to in your article, I enjoy both the actor and adventurer role. My short rebounds into Wow proves that the actor does work, albeit a short lived, and short satisfaction experience. It just doesn’t have the traction. WoW recently sharing that there are more ex-WoW players than current players supports the opinion that it is a shallower experience. Besides, for a more engaging actor experience there are single player games that perform that role much better. We definitely need more adventurer options.
The danger with MMO’s being a predominately ‘actor’ experience, is that the majority of the newish playerbase who have discovered MMO’s are now trained on that expectation – forced to play with lack of imagination, and a clear path to follow, means the success of a true adventurer MMO is even less likely to succeed (both from a potential investor viewpoint and a player expectation point).
Which is why, I suppose, you have been writing all these blog posts in the first place =)
Initially the MMO actor experience is euphoric for a player. It’s akin to the thrill of going to a movie theatre or amusement park ride. You live vicariously through the actions of others.
You are correct that single player games do a much better job of being a single player game than a MMO like WoW. Seeing a steady stream of players go from the same quest NPCs is immersion breaking and something that you will never see in a single player game.
But the most tragic thing of all is when the scripted fun runs out. What then? No company — even Blizzard — has yet figured out how to create quality content fast enough to satiate this new breed of actor players. Perhaps this is why the monstrosity of “daily quests” was invented.
Again I agree with you that the big danger is that new MMO players now have expectations about what a MMO is. They see the quest centric MMO as the standard. They will never know how to create and define their own entertainment or “fun”. These players have been cheated.
Everyone is different. Some of us like to watch TV for hours upon end. Some of us like to talk with friends for hours. I’d like to see a MMO that allows us to be entertained and lets us entertain at the same time. The problem is that companies like Blizzard have committed themselves so entirely to the quest/actor model that there is no turning back.
As always, great article!
Whats interesting is that I couldn’t help but see the gloomy tone of your writing when discussing the actor vs. adventurer. Its a feeling I have been experiencing and seeing amongst other MMO adventurers over the past years. Many of us have been holding out hope for some company to release that one great sandbox (or even a themepark with in-depth customization) game that may be considered our game of choice yet, it just doesn’t seem (at least to me) that it will ever come. I mean, look at the titles we have to look forward to in the immediate future: SWTOR, GW2, The Secret World, etc etc etc… They all just seem to be running along those tracks of cut and paste, with a tweak here and there, that we have been seeing for 6+ years. Beyond that, they all seem to be further catering towards the casual masses even more and more… It really is disheartening!
The crazy thing is, I never thought I would ever get to this point. But while I love MMO’s (or what MMOs were and could have been), I just don’t think there is much hope out there for us adventurers to ever regain what we once had. This hope is the reason we are always accused of living in the past, rather than adjusting to the “future” of MMOs… It’s the reason we still discuss and wave the flag of “old-school gamer” with pride. However, I really don’t know if I can fight the good fight anymore… and I know there are others out there who feel the same way.
The question I have for you is: Do you think it’s about time we give up the hope and just accept that the MMO industry has been corrupted forever?
Personally, I believe that is what the big developer companies would like. It has become abundantly clear that they are more than happy to cater to a newer, younger, and more solo-friendly audience. It is clear that the core MMO gamer who weened this genre into existence really means nothing to the companies that fund these new games coming out.
As you said above:
“The road less traveled has vanished into the mists of MMO history and all that remains is a super highway that leads to the mundane and mediocre.”
Is this road less traveled lost forever? I believe so. Those with the power to change the course of the proverbial MMO train, seem to have either 1) bought a ticket along for the ride or 2) lost interest and stayed at home. The really sad part is that while I don’t want to do either, choice 2) its looking more and more appealing every day…
Wolfshead, great post. I too think it’s a big shame to see how online games have developed over the years. However, I am not as pessimistic about the future. Of course, if you talk about the MMO ‘industry’ then that will, by its very nature, go where the money is, and for every 1 person who truly wants to adventure there seem to be 100 more who’d rather follow the glowing yellow exclamation marks. So that won’t change in the short term. However, look away from the big releases and towards smaller teams – as the technology to create games matures, indie developers are making more and more ambitious projects, and just as indie developers are the ones taking most of the risks and innovating in games generally (eg. with Minecraft, Braid, etc), so will it be the case with MMOs. Sure, you won’t get 8 million subscribers to an indie MMO: but does that really matter? I think many people like us would happily play a game 2 or even 3 orders of magnitude smaller if it gave us that authentic sense of adventure, shared with hundreds of like-minded people. So someone will surely make such games. Maybe they already are.
^^Agree
I’ll just bet the big MMOs are going to burn out and die just like other genre have done. I think we can already see it in the way new clone and conquer MMOs have a quick rush at release followed by a quick death. It makes me wonder how well Titan will do if Blizzard doesn’t change the same old actor formula.
Regarding indie games, I’ve recently found a great indie space adventure game, a la Star Control; that was created by 2 guys. They said they made the game because they couldn’t find games like it anymore that they wanted to play. Now doesn’t that sound familiar?
Shortened version of my comment, but maybe this emphasizes the point:
SWTOR, GW2: cinematic, story/quest driven gameplay. In GW2 the char creation ends with “This is MY story”.
I am afraid this is the era of the super casual solo player who doesn’t want to play alone but hell would this player hate having to talk or cooperate with other players occasionally. Unless it is a dungeon that hopefully doesn’t tax the pickup group so much that they whine and ragequit.
What works for the great Bioware single player RPGs is poison for MMOs. No matter how great the quests are and how fascinating the plot. Its another genre.
This design is totally ignoring the power of the playerbase to be creative and do something in their world. They rather wait to get served more content, more of “their” ? story. (I still desperately hope GW2 turns out to be better than that…!)
Basically, the multiplayer component isn’t really needed. People are not even actors in this world, they are couch potato style consumers. Adventurers? Not in happy kitty land without any loss or hardship.
Raiding while watching TV and having dinner. Following the green arrow and doing daily quests. How can ever a community grow if it isn’t needing for anything?
Actor is too much for this! That’s consumer mentality.
As usual, an amazing read. I agree with you 100% and definitely enjoy playing the role of the adventurer.
Even in RTS games, I rarely play the scripted scenarios and campaigns because I feel like it’s too scripted. I prefer the custom games where I can build an empire and imagine how events unfold, etc.
My brothers simply can’t understand why I bother with sandbox games. They see me playing a game like Xsyon, where I’ll be cutting down trees, gathering the wood, sawing it, and adding it to a building project for a house. I’m seeing the big picture and enjoying the experience, whereas all they can ask is, “So… what are you supposed to do?”
The notion that they aren’t told what to do in a game is alien to them. What’s strange is my first MMORPG was WoW, and I stopped after 3 months, never to return. Perhaps some gamers just have the adventurer mindset from the start, and don’t necessarily have to be veterans of games like Ultima or Everquest. Then again, I wish I would have known about and played them in their prime.
Ser Ian McKellen on acting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyoWmkhRyp8
I experience the same with mostly younger friends, they got used to getting told what to do in MMOs as well. Almost impossible to interest them for anything else.
Good post. It definitely sheds light on to the whole MMO industry. It’s become pretty shallow these days. I’m a huge Star Wars fan but I can’t see TOR being any good. It just looks the same as any other MMO out there with a few deviations(most notably the single player action will be rather good). I don’t see why they felt the need to make it an MMO. I loved KOTOR, so why couldn’t they just make it another game like that? I would buy an RPG like TOR, but not an MMO like it.
I just can’t find myself playing any MMO that’s been announced aside from GW2 which seems like it tries to cater to the adventurer in more than one way. If you like solo RPGs, try the single player. If you like exploring with other players, you can do that too with great success. I have much faith in that game to be honest. I’ve played it myself at PAX Prime and it definitely didn’t seem like a copy/paste.
I don’t really have much faith in the MMO industry as a whole though. It’s turned into a caricature of itself.
so wolf what do you see as the MMO choices that are favourable to our adventuring thirst – are we all back to EQ1? – what are your current ideas here?
I wish I had some answers for you. I wish there were some real alternatives out there in the MMO realm.
Sure I’m hoping that Guild Wars 2, 38 Studios “Copernicus” (still don’t have a title yet? c’mon guys, you can do better…) and EverQuest Next will help to push the pendulum back toward the adventurer style MMO but I’m not that hopeful.
I’m starting to believe that the dominant design trends we are seeing in video games right now — this notion that players must be told what to do and where to go may be a reflection of how our society is going — especially youth culture.
What I mean by this is that today children’s and teen’s lives have never be been more controlled and regulated by parents and teachers due to such high expectations placed upon them. Their lives are inundated with sports and other extra curricular activities (so they can get into good colleges) with precious time for themselves where they can be creative and explore their individuality. In a sense, students today are much like MMO players — they are being told to go from quest giver to quest giver. There is no real use for individuality or outside the box thinking in this kind of world.
There’s a lot of group think out there too. Combine that with the strong peer pressure to conform and it’s no wonder that MMOs like WoW — which I loathe — are so amenable to young people today. It’s almost as if they are a reflection of the way people live their lives as everything is so scripted and regimented.
I think the disease of heavily scripted and linear MMOs like WoW may be symptomatic of our culture to a large degree. If that is the case then it will take a paradigm shift in our own culture to get back to a MMO where individuality, freedom, challenge and risk are more valued.
Hey Wolf,
Been awhile since I checked out your blog but when ever I do the articles always make me think.:)
I missed Everquest by a few years but got into MMO’s with Asherons Call and Dark Age of Camelot. Even back then being an adventurer was what gave me more satisfaction playing a game and it still does.
Everything you brought up I have experienced since searching for an MMO that actually has adventure. A few of us that were in the Rift beta were hoping to find that and were sadly disappointed in not only the rail system of questing but also the apparent small world size.
One point you made I want to comment on.
“I’m starting to believe that the dominant design trends we are seeing in video games right now — this notion that players must be told what to do and where to go may be a reflection of how our society is going — especially youth culture.”
This made me reflect on the way society suggests to young people to succeed you must go to college and then look for a good JOB after school. Instead of being creative by becoming an entrepreneur and start your own business, etc.
I do believe we may never see a adventure MMO in today’s market from big publishers but the hope is still there for an indie company to accomplish this.
Curtis
Hi Curtis, great to see you commenting again old friend!
That’s a good analogy you used that makes a lot of sense. It’s true there is a pervasive notion that there is a guaranteed path to success in life. It seems safer to get an higher education than to be subject to the risks out there in the marketplace. Many famous people and CEOs never completed college. Sadly most people are sheep these days and that goes for education, politics, culture, music and fashion.
A lot of the current design trend comes down to bigger designer egos. Every designer wants to be a storyteller now. They see the big single player games that are all story based and they think it’s ok to interject those elements into virtual worlds and MMOs but they never seem to ask if it’s appropriate to do so.
Players should be making their own stories and experiences — not the game designers. I wish MMO devs would stop treating players like lemmings. There is a real lack of restraint in much of today’s MMO design ethos.
MMO are becoming more of a passive form of entertainment like TV than a form of active entertainment. The only way to reverse this trend is for some billionaire to create a platform and world where the spirit of adventure — not scripted quests — is the order of the day.
There is hope. Activision cancelled the guitar hero series afte the public had enough. I just wish the MMO community would get sick of the current Blizzard paradigm and stop paying and playing for the unambitious drivel that is WoW.
One thing is for sure, if people keep supporting Blizzard MMOs will never get better.
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2011/09/10000-hours-to-mastery.html
“It is all rather bad for the veterans who can’t adapt to a more casual play style. Thus we get blogs of people like Wolfshead or Syncaine who constantly complain how the MMORPG genre has been ruined, who constantly tell you how much better the games of the past (or niche games made like games of the past) were, and who on closer examination turn out to be online game pundits who don’t play online games anymore, because the genre has moved on and left them behind”
Thanks for the link. There’s a lot here to contemplate and to respond to. I admit I don’t read Tobold that much anymore and even other blogs as I just don’t have as much time due to other commitments.
The problem is that the design pendulum has swung too far to the opposite extreme. Virtual worlds just feel too safe for me; there is no real challenge outside the hardcore raiding game. I want to be part of a virtual world that matters and demands some semblance of focus and awareness of its participants.
Is that such a bad thing to want from a MMO?
There is a reason why some people climb mountains — it’s because it’s hard. If climbing mountains were easy then it would be meaningless endeavor. Good game designers know and understand this.
What little time I have and spend in a virtual world I want it to count for something. I want it to be exciting, dangerous and meaningful. We’ve lost that because MMO companies have created safe little amusement parks that are designed to make everyone feel warm and cuddly.
This casual style of game play that Tobold talks about has come at a great cost. With so many conveniences like the Dungeon Finder tool, players themselves have become devalued and reduced to NPCs. Players have become a means to an end instead of being the end in themselves. The feeling of camaraderie and fellowship that one got from banding together to face mutual adversaries has all but vanished.
Let’s be honest, all of this has happened because companies like Blizzard want to make more profits by attracting a wider subscriber base via dumbed-down gameplay. MMO design has become a numbers game. All of these design changes have their genesis in that tragic reality.
Now everyone must fit into the MMO “casual” world that Blizzard has created. I categorically reject this “one size fits all” mentality. I want something better and I am appalled that MMOs have been reduced to to the equivalent of fast food.
The original team that made EverQuest didn’t approach making the world of Norrath with calculators, spreadsheets and focus groups. They approached it true craftsmanship and with the attitude of “how can we make the best online fantasy world possible”. Build it and they will come.
I’m not saying that we should go back to the original EverQuest but we are kidding ourselves if we continue to embrace the plastic Blizzard design mantra and expect our time online to mean anything or have any worth. Blizzard is in the business of selling self-delusion in the form of false heroism to it’s subscribers. Don’t be fooled. No wonder MMO players are feeling an virtual existential crisis. They’ve been cheated.
“I want something better and I am appalled that MMOs have been reduced to to the equivalent of fast food.”
Just as eating fast food all the time is not good for your health, so is eating MMO fast food.:)
Way back when, the people who played MMOs were nerds and geeks and on average, people with below average face-to-face social skills. I was one of them, I was in a guild with a pile of them, in games with hundreds of them. That’s one of the main reasons games up until WoW never breached 500K subs. The people who played were generally, of the same mind. It was the definition of niche. Think about it, a large chunk of the population played EQ on dialup when it launched.
Fast forward to the WoW age, where kids with disposable income were used to using technology. Everyone had a cell, nearly everyone had internet. It was easy to access anything online, games were popular (thanks xbox and ps2). A different crowd started playing, the ones who didn’t have a vested interest or attachment, simply wanted to blow some cash to blow some time. But the devs see that this new crowd completely dwarfs the original players. Making them mainstream brought in piles and piles of cash.
How many products can you think of where they were once niche and you were proud to have one or know someone who did? How often did the product change drastically once it went mainstream? MMOs are the same.
The niche value of these games still exists but the crowd that will entertain these ideas has moved on for multiple reasons. Either there hasn’t been a game around for a while that meets their needs or they already have an established social scene in another game (more than likely the cause).
The only people claiming that MMOs are dead are the ones with a vested interest. They’ve had plenty of opportunity to voice their opinion with their cash and yet here we are. WoW could lose 1 million players a year and it would take 10 years for them to reach the next most popular MMO’s population.
Kinda reminds me of the Battlefield boycott on Steam that had 90% of them on the game on day 1. It’s all for show.
@Asmiroth:
Quote: “…reminds me of the Battlefield boycott on Steam that had 90% of them on the game on day 1. It’s all for show.”
Only it’s not “all for show”. There are a large number of us that becoming increasingly jaded — we are craving persistent, virtual worlds, but are not finding it with the current MMO offerings. I.e. we want to play something, but cannot find anything suitable. Therefore we do not play at all. (And certainly notWoW.)
E.g. I’m completely done with WoW (for me to ever play it again, they would have to pay ME). I tried Rift and found it to be rather “meh” — more dumbed-down theme-park game-play. (I’m trying to get excited to resubscribe to Rift, but it ain’t happening so far…)
There’s literally nothing out there that’s really compelling, so now I’m pretty much an ex-MMO player. I don’t want to be, but I am for the time being.
The reason WoW continues to succeed is not because we jaded types are somehow still infusing it with cash! It’s because of things like the new “play for free until level 20” campaign — those players qualify as subscriptions to the bean counters. It’s because of things like the designers continuing to dumb it down and market it to the lowest common denominator, e.g. the Facebook (Farmville) crowd. (Which seem to be mostly a lazy bunch who expect everything handed to them on a silver platter.)
I really think part of the problem is Zynga and its ilk: Zynga comes out of left field making billions from games with stupifyingly simplistic game-play; of course the so-called AAA MMO publishers want a slice of that pie! So of course they’re going to dumb-down the game-play to attract that “casual” (read: lazy) crowd.
I don’t think we can expect a good “meaty” persistent world from any of the AAA MMO publishers any more. Blizzard’s “Titan”, or Bioware’s SWTOR… those will be nice games, but persistent, virtual worlds they will not be.
Check this one out.
http://www.archeage.com/en/pds/media
I really like this idea of adventure vs. Actor experiences that you’re talking about. And I actually agree with you on your view of the new Wow MOP. (I was there, and it seemed just as childish, everyone said pokemon the moment it left their mouths, etc.)
I wanted to hear about your thoughts on Eve Online http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08hmqyejCYU (A trailer on their idea of adventure game play). Do you think this is an example of adventure play?
I stopped playing Wow when I realized I was logging on and staring at my character and not completing anything with anyone. I want to play games with people, and have my actions have some weight in the world. And now, actually playing eve online, and interacting with the people in it is changing me as a player. It’s hard to start, the learning curve has stopped me from playing before as it’s unscripted you really have so many directions you can take it and it’s difficult to be alone with all of those choices before you.
Thinking back to your article on Blizzcon I wish now that I had gone to the open QA and asked them questions about player interaction and how they were planning on getting players to fight each other like the story of Wow would have us be doing.
Thanks for the comments! That EVE video is brilliant and illustrates the potential virtual worlds have. That is definitely my idea of adventure player where nothing is scripted.
You are right regarding the lack of player interaction in WoW with regard to the fact that the premise of WoW (2 factions at war with each other) while sound in theory never really materialized.
The big problem with Blizzard is that they are arrogant control freaks. They feel the need to script every aspect of their game — yes it is a game and not a world. Nothing is left to change; everything is predictable. Without the opportunity for players to change the game world (as stated in the EVE promo video) everything is meaningless.
Blizzard should be ashamed at how complacent and unambitious they have become. They have squandered an incredible opportunity to advance the MMO genre and instead are just advancing the fortunes of Activision while plundering the heart and soul of the legacy they inherited from EverQuest.
I’ve just found this site while trying to find an MMO that addresses the problems you have aparently been going on about for a very long time!
I’m a wow player and I remember when I first started I had so much fun doing quests, dungeons, raids, and raiding enemy cities with friends and guildies. Nowadays WoW is a single-player game, then there is raiding… usually this involves lots of bad attitudes, name calling, and very little team coordination.
Are there any MMO’s or guilds within the games that take a proactive approach to this? Or, to be more specific, is there any place I can still play a massively multiplayer game, or do we all need to be satisfied with a single player game that has a chat room for now?
So there is a lot of complaining going on here. Fine, I agree with all of it. But what do you provide in exchange? Come on, just mention some games that have lived up to your expectations. Seriously, give me something back, instead of ripping away what I have left!
the gripping truth of the MMO industry, even now guild wars 2 is being compared to WOW
I agree spazztik…
Wolf, can you ewcommend a game for those of use who were EQ players and share your sentiments…
BTW what is your take on the current state of the game in EQ?
I realize this is a year-old post, but I have to point out – the last line of the Frost poem, is missing.. Looking at the source, it’s missing the start of a paragraph tag, and thereby not showing up (at least in Opera and Firefox).
Fixed! Thanks for pointing this out to me 🙂