It's been quite some time, really, since I decided to try the new online sensation that is the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Since then I've logged several hundred hours across Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, The Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeon Runners, Everquest, City of Heroes / City of Villains, and R.O.S.E. Online.

And I've given them all up. For one main reason:

Trying to organize a group of strangers to achieve a common goal is next to impossible.

Take Final Fantasy XI for example. Most of the game consists of finding a 'camp', sending one guy out to lure a monster over to your camp, and then beating on it mercilessly until it keels over and you get somehow stronger. Especially in the early levels, it really is that simple, but you'll get people who act like they've never held a controller before, will walk off from their PC / Playstation without telling you, or instead of bringing one monster back to the camp, they'll bring every monster in a five-mile radius for an insta-slaughter.

Or World of Warcraft. You might have a quest that tells you to take a thing to a guy in the next town over. If you've done the quest before and you know where the second guy is, you tell your buddies and start off to deliver the parcel. You get there only to discover that one guy followed you there, one guy got lost and ended up falling off a cliff, one guy is still at the store getting his gear fixed / selling trash, and one guy went to get supper 20 minutes ago, but didn't bother to tell anyone, so he's two towns back wondering where everyone is and begging them to come back to help him finish up the steps of the quest that everyone's already done.

And on it goes that way. It's as if the people on the other end of the game were plopped down in front of the control panel of a nuclear submarine, and all of the controls were in Esperanto.

So, rather than trying to deal with that nonsense, I mostly end up playing those kinds of games in single-player mode. Which is great, I don't have to listen to anyone whining, I don't have to bother with trying to coordinate chunks of missions around someone's dog-walking schedule, and I can generally do things in the order that I want to, with the added bonus that if I take down a challenge that's meant for a group by myself, then the victory was harder fought and slightly more memorable.

Of course, that means that I also miss out on large chunks of the games, mostly because I'm not bothering to do much of the group stuff, but that's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

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It looks like today might be MMO day. Richard Garriott, progenitor of the Ultima games has delivered a keynote in which he notes that design of MMO games has not significantly changed in the 10 years since he brought out Ultima Online

Core gameplay elements are the same, and Garriott argues, the lack of innovation is cheating players out of a richer experience.

"Combat systems, character leveling that caused players to obsesses over 'grinding' and the misassumption that AI can be replace by player-controlled characters were the features he dismantled and accused MMO developers of being overly reliant on."

I've only had in-depth experience with two MMORPGs, Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft (I'm not counting my trial of 9Dragons), and the sameness of the core gameplay is striking. I've put together a quick and dirty comparison of them below:

Unfortunately, most of the activities in these games can be put into each of these categories. The NPCs don't move and don't change what they say or do in response to anything that happens in the game world, or if they do, it's because of a fairly significant world event. This seems to be because even though there are thousands of players in a given server or world, they are all experiencing the same story. They are the hero going on epic quests to whatever end, most likely quelling evil. What happens when you finally defeat the Great Evil? Nothing, really. You get a cutscene, some loot (phat lewt, no doubt), some adulation by some NPCs and the Great Evil reappears for the next group of adventurers to try their hand at vanquishing it.

I've not played them, but games like Eve Online give the players the chance to play the economy, build companies, and the like. This is good for those who don't necessarily want to stand in one place and kill goblins all day, it gives them something to do to break up the monotony. I also understand that Star Wars Galaxies allowed characters to open shops, create communities, and generally alter their game world, but since I've not played either it or Eve I can't really say how much fun either of those things are. I do, however, like that they have activities that are slightly different from the norm. It helps keep the game fresh.

I understand that my view of these games is somewhat skewed, but the single design I would like to see changed is geared toward the single player. I quite enjoyed playing both of the MMORPGs that I did for the time I was a subscriber, but I'm strange and ran out of stuff to do, even though I didn't get to the maximum level. I prefer to play those games either with people that I know in real life, though a pick-up party on occasion is nice, or to play them by myself. The big problem is that MMORPGs are developed around the concept of parties. You do everything in a party, you do quests, you slaughter native fauna (and sometimes flora), and you experience the bulk of the story all in a party. So if my group of regulars is unavailable when I want to play, my choices on what I can do are pretty limited.

The question then becomes, "Why are you playing a multiplayer game if you want to play by yourself?" The answer is that I like the game, I like the mechanics, and I like checking out the game world. The problem is that in real life I don't have to gather a group of six people to slaughter sheep while I run to the store and fetch some milk, or chop some wood, or mine some ore. Yes, real life wilderness is teeming with wildlife, but there's not some creature waiting behind every tree plotting to kill you.

Here's to radical design changes.

Link! (via Kotaku)

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There is an interesting interview up with Richard Bartle, one of the folks behind MUD, a virtual world programmed way back in 1978. Running on code carved onto great sheets of stone and running on some steam-powered contraption, no doubt. MUD has had quite the influence on modern MMORPGs. There is an interview with Mr. Bartle here that details some of his views on how far the genre has come in the last 29 years and how much they've stayed the same.

"However, when all is said and done, reality is far more detailed than virtuality can ever be. There are some forms of social interaction you can't get any other way. Reality always wins in the end. A kiss in a virtual world or a kiss over the phone is never going to be the same as a kiss in real life."

The interview is certainly worth a read even if you're only marginally interested in virtual worlds.

Link!
Guardian Unlimited via DevBump)

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It's bee quite some time since I quit playing Final Fantasy XI. I actually quite liked the game, but the pacing of the game was ponderously slow and if you didn't have a group of at least 5 friends then you had troubles making it to the next town without getting savagely beaten to death by rabbits and silkworms. If you did have a balanced group then the game was quite fun, even standing in one place slaughtering fish was entertaining if your group worked well together.

I thought that the barrier to entry for this game was fairly low, since you can get the game and 3 expansions for $20, but apparently it gets lower. Eurogamer is reporting that folks will be able to get a 'starter pack' version of the game (just the main game with no expansions) and a free month of gameplay for £5.99 (or about $12.27 in American money, or about the equivalent of a one month subscription to the game). I wasn't able to determine if it was coming out stateside or not.

Is this a desperate attempt to increase a stagnating userbase or ingenious plan to draw attention to the new expansion pack?

Time will tell!

Link! (Eurogamer)

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A while back, Acclaim folded as a game company. The Acclaim name was bought by one of the guys from Activision, turned into Acclaim Games, and began pumping out MMORPG's. Wikipedia's article is somewhat lacking, but will give you a basic understanding of the situation.

I got an invite from one of my friends to try out one of their RPGs, 9 Dragons. It's a game based on Kung-Fu. You travel the land, join a Kung-Fu clan, and beat things up. Seemed like a reasonable premise for a game.

More details inside.

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There is an interesting article over at steveswink.com exploring whether or not MMORPG game makers are wasting their time making their games in the same way that their players are playing them.

"The crux of the question is whether or not playing WoW is more or less a waste of your life than creating original games intended to produce the same kind of enjoyment. In this age of digital property, virtual experience, how does one set of bits have value relative to another? How is it that Shane is wasting his life while I am an artist or a game designer or whatever? Why is sitting around making games and digital art different than raids on Molten Core?"

I've been on both sides of this coin, and I'm going to have to say that development 'Crunch Time' is certainly more stressful than any raid, it can easily eclipse the amount of time that a hardcore MMO player might spend in an average week in game, and may just as detrimental to your health. Though you are getting paid to Crunch instead of paying to play your MMO, so I suppose Crunch may be slightly less so.

Link! (via DevBump)

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The New York Times has an article detailing the daily worklife of the Chinese Gold Farmer, the scapegoat of MMO players everywhere. Shockingly, they don't make much money by American standards.

"For every 100 gold coins he gathers, Li makes 10 yuan, or about $1.25, earning an effective wage of 30 cents an hour, more or less. The boss, in turn, receives $3 or more when he sells those same coins to an online retailer, who will sell them to the final customer (an American or European player) for as much as $20."

Link! from Slashdot

I quit playing World of Warcraft on June 12, 2005 making it 1 year, 11 months, and 17 days since I've played it last. Not that I'm counting. Imagine my surprise, then, when the following arrived in my mailbox:

Now, ignoring all of the things in that picture that make me a huge dork, you'll notice, around the center, that I have been sent a DVD that has the free 10-day trial on it (as well as the original version, should I have misplaced it, or course). I'm guessing that the unsolicited email announcement I got about it combined with the media blitz that I absolutely can't get away from just wasn't quite enough to pique my interest in the game, since the expansion's been out for a full four months since the game came out and I still haven't managed to get to the store and buy it.

Of course, if I do reinstall the game, install the expansion, play for 10 days, decide I like it, and then decide I want to resume my subscription, I'll have to pony up $40 for the full price of the expansion, whether I download it from Blizzard directly or get a box from the store. Heck, I don't even really need the box, I have the full version of the game. I just need that precious serial number.