Farewell to Hyboria

[pyat]

My dad bought me a used IBM-XT clone for Christmas, 1989. Around that time, Omni magazine was carrying ads for dial-up MUDs, multiple-user text enviroments where you could hang out and pretend to be a dwarf. I loved this idea. I imagined making a con artist in one. I'd describe him as a wise old man, and he'd sit outside the town gate and sell bogus treasure maps to people. Indeed, when I eventually got onto MUDs and MUCKs, I did this sort of thing.

It's frustrating that I can't do that sort of thing in a much more advanced game, like the Conan MMORPG. I can't, because every character in the game is clearly marked as a player or computer character. And, no one talks to the other players, if they can help it.

I gave up on the Conan MMORPG about a day after my last review. I don't know whether this game in particular is just really badly flawed, or whether I'm simply not constitutionally fitted to play MMORPGs. Certainly they seem to require an investment of time over and above anything I'm willing to commit. I got to level 11, and the quests did not get any more epic. They just got longer, or more unrealistic.

At one point, a blacksmith asked me to fetch a crate of steel from a ship at the dock, in exhange for a pair of boots. I got there, and found the crate stuck in the crane. The crew told me I could have it, if I could get it down. I poked at the crane, and the crate fell to the deck and crashed open. The captain was displeased, but let me take the ore, though I'm not sure where I put it. But, this seems to have been an unavoidable scripted event.


_{Oops! Butterfingers! Can I still have my steel?}

It also explained the pile of broken crates on deck. Every few minutes, another player comes along to do this quest, and a broken crate is added to the pile. Presumably, they vanish after a while, or the ship would be nothing but a pile of broken crates. Also, that seems like an awful lot of steel for me to be carrying on my own.

But, really, this is just an example of how the MMORPG works against any kind of immersive experience. How hard would it be to designed a quest that doesn't end up with a stack of broken crates piling up in the same place? It's like everything in the game is designed to remind you that you are playing a game. It's like watching a movie in which the boom mic is constantly visible, or reading a book filled with editing markups. It's like playing an RPG in middle-school with guys who make fun of you for trying to act in character.


_Tortage

It almost makes me angry. Here they have created this enormous, beautiful world, with an engine for adjudicating relationships between players, with three dimensional cities and wilderness. This is precisely how I imagined computer games would be someday! Except, the reality is clunky and non-engaging.

You'd think I could wander through this world experiencing wonderful adventures, and meeting interesting people. But the game is specifically designed to defeat that. You don't go into the tavern and swap tales of treasure, or seek adventuring companions. You run pell-mell from place to place, following little arrows on the map and killing things when you arrive. The game does not encourage interaction. If you stay and chat, you get left behind.

The last quest I accepted involved killing 20 snakes, and 20 scorpions. I didn't even start on it. The one before that required me to kill 30 Pict tribesmen. Except, instead of killing 30 of them, I killed the same two guys, 15 times over... because they respawn in the same spot after a couple of minutes.

How is that fun? How is that immersive?

Comments

[warphammer.livejournal.com]

I only ever played one MMO, really. I was in the original Everquest beta. Coming from one of the nicest MUDs around, I wandered around, hacked some things - amused at the appearance they'd lifted the combat backend from some MUD codebase - and realized it was the same thing, minus the imagination and fun RP groups running around.

Then I stopped.

[relee.livejournal.com]

Well, Age of Conan is a particularly badly recieved MMORPG that is rapidly loosing its subscriber base and probably won't last another year or two.

I remember one MMO I played briefly, years ago, where I had a quest to restore a broken windmill. I took a piece of windmill in my invisible backpack and carried it to the broken windmill, where I clicked on it, it lit up, and turned into a fixed windmill, for about thirty seconds, before breaking again so other players could fix it.


This all reminds me of a comic written to make fun of World of Warcraft. http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=080820 Take a look. ^.^


Most of these games have diverged from their noble intentions, it's not good to compare them to MUDs, really. Most of them are basically casinos for kids. They make a lot of pretty lights and sounds and some arbitrary numbers constantly go up the more you press the buttons and do what you're told.

The worst ones are the Asian MMORPGs, which are specifically designed to mind control people into giving up rediculous amounts of money. Here try reading this article: http://www.danwei.org/electronic_games/gambling_your_life_away_in_zt.php


There's still a lot of potential in the genre but most of the games are trying to go the wrong way. They're not trying to be realistic or immersive. They're not trying to be worlds, they're just glitzing up a slot machine, and only giving you pretend money if you win.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I've heard EVE Online is a lot better for this. Mind you, I also heard it has an insane learning curve, because you have to actually understand the societies functioning in it to prevent being eaten alive.

[elvishefer.livejournal.com]

EVE is a pure PVP MMORPG. Most of the quests are instances based on ship to ship combat. While there are other types - courier, exploration, etc. - they are basically the same mechanic. Move part from A to B. Go to system X, drop probes, complete map. Etc. etc. I think you would find it disappointing if you went into it expecting anything like the classic MUDs or other games described in the original post.

[relee.livejournal.com]

They completely re-did the newbie experience in EVE a few months ago, so that it includes training on the societies functioning in it, though I haven't tried it yet.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

Now you see why IMC has continued to maintain its appeal for me. Not just because I wrote the thing, but because it's about people creating spaces in the imagination with other people.

MMOs can have some of that, but for the most part they're really big Infocom games ... without the charm of being text-only

[halfelf.livejournal.com]

Welcome to ALL modern MMOGs. If you notice, I don't call them MMORPGs - there's no roleplaying in any of them. Roleplaying is not encouraged. There's very little allowances made for it. Even the game I work on doesn't have much in it. We do have people who try, and we try to do a lot of story, but... there's plenty of players who just play these games to click the next lever in the skinner box. And that's just sad.

[relee.livejournal.com]

World of Warcraft has dedicated Roleplaying servers... ^.^;;

There's a lot of argument on what it means to roleplay though. Like, lots of people say that they can only roleplay in a 100% open PvP world where they can kill anybody else at any time, but then that's not roleplaying, that's just playing. ^.^;;

Everybody wanted to roleplay on Shadowbane, which had open PvP, but then the Non-roleplayers were naturally more powerful than folks who gimped themselves with story and waste time typing when they should be swinging their sword mutely. Same thing in Darkfall, I'll bet...

[elvishefer.livejournal.com]

I don't think you should confuse the time sinks in the game with the 'fun' in the game. As someone else pointed out, the business goal of the game is to keep a customer tied up in the time sink while improving their characters to have more fun while:

1) doing complex PVE encounters, as in WoW, or;
2) fighting other players, as in Warhammer Online, AoC (apparently), Guildwars, etc. etc. etc.

There is typically crossover between PVE and PVP in all MMOs these days, and I think they all share another common characteristic. The role play evolved down a developmental branch that serves a market segment with an audience large enough to justify the huge development costs of the games.

When WAR launched, for example, it had three "role play" servers where "role play" rules were in place. Names had to be in character. People spoke in character, and apologized when they didn't. Some acted as pseudo gm's and created quests for lowbies. Some held in-game weddings between toons. I went to three. For the same groom. (Different spouses!) But, when WAR launched its 3 RP servers were outnumbered by 20 or more non-RP servers.

I used to play Dark Age of Camelot. For a few months I ran with a regular group of seven other players. We gamed the system and circumvented most of the leveling time sinks. We geared our toons as best as was possible. And every week night when we could swing it, between 9 and 11, we would fight together.

We were almost always out-numbered. We had to learn every nuance of our character classes, their abilities and the game system around it. We had to learn the terrain we fought in, the tricks, the line of sight exploits, the escape routes. Every night we would devise strategies to beat the enemy zerg. Each of us had a specific role to play, and playing it right or wrong was the difference between winning or losing.

The fun - the truly addictive allure of it all - was when eight people scattered all across North America got so good at playing together as a team they began to fight as one.

Now, I've played video games since I was 12-years-old, and that's a good many years. I've played all kinds, and I love my digital entertainment. But nothing compares to how much I enjoyed running with that group.

It was definitely not a classic 'role play' experience. Yet, I certainly played a role. And I think that's what the words role play mean when used to describe today's big budget games like AoC, WAR, WOW, and others. Filling a role, moreso than acting out a role.

I think there are more consumers comfortable with the latter than the former. The former requires creativity and vision; the latter requires a mechanical understanding of process and ability.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Also, this game was marked down to $3.99, six months after release. That might have something to do with the suck. :)

[relee.livejournal.com]

The World of Warcraft 'endgame', Raiding, is basically a team sport. Between five and fourty guys all organize together and work as a team to overcome obstacles presented by the game. There's really no fun to it without other people, that's the key. The only reason I played World of Warcraft so long was that I had other people to play with. I stopped playing when the people went away.

[thebitterguy]

All I can say is it's not surprising that you got it for the price of a sandwich.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

A cheap sandwich, even. That does rather put things into perspective, yes.

[rodant-kapoor.livejournal.com]

The pile of broken crates you experienced was similar to my World of Warcraft experience. The first time I played the game (as an undead) I was sent out to kill ten undead-hating guys and collect their scarlet armbands. One of them was a named dude who respawned so frequently I kilt him three times. When I got back to my source, I was told to go out and kill the guy I had just killed thrice. "I have three of his skulls!" I wanted to shout. As for the time I played a tauren and was sent to some bad guy's hut to kill him and had to queue for my turn, the less said the better.

The only game that I kept playing after the trial period is City of Heroes (and Villains these days). All missions are instanced except for the "kill X number of bad guys", so one doesn't have those immersion-breaking waits for respawning. Heck, it's "defeat" the bad guys, not "kill", so if you happen to team with someone who runs a mission you've already done, it's like the boss broke out of prison or something.

I considered trying Eve, but I'm no fan of PvP. I don't even read the webcomic.

[acegreco.livejournal.com]

Well yes, but the 'reality' of superheroes is tenuous at best to begin with. There's not much suspension of disbelief because you're already doing it by default. ;)

[rodant-kapoor.livejournal.com]

Pyat was talking about immersion, not suspension of disbelief. Any fictional construct that calls attention to its own artificiality is liable to be less immersive. If you notice you've been fetching fish for a starving man who's been standing next to a table with food the whole time (http://pyat.livejournal.com/926694.html), you'll probably stop thinking of yourself as a white-frocked priest in the world of Conan, and start thinking of yourself as a gamer in a Skinner box.

So I wholly agree with Pyat: A game which constantly reminds you that you're playing a game is less rewarding than a game that takes even a little effort to maintain the player's immersion.

[rowyn]

City of Heroes/Villains is, as far as I'm concerned, the best of the genre. On Virtue, you can even find people who want to roleplay (koogrr does it frequently).

But I find the game elements of all MMOs don't add much to RP. The RP is still all conducted by people typing, and setting up scenarios to run (using the Architect feature, even) is simultaneously both more time-consuming than plotting a tabletop or MUCK adventure AND less flexible.

So ... I don't feel like I'm roleplaying in the games, generally. They're fun on their own terms, but if what you want is "like my tabletop group, only with awesome graphics", they're very disappointing. We're not near the point where the design UIs for a GM are easy and flexible enough to let you run a good game in a lovely virtual setting. Maybe in another 20 years. >:)

[acegreco.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately there's a huge case in both camps for leaving things the way they are and improving them tenfold. As much as the world is beautiful, every unique item the developers include increases the server load significantly. If a MMO provides a unique quest that populates a random person in the game world that only you are able to talk to in order to fulfill the quest, all of a sudden that character needs to be seen on every system accessing the world, logic needs to be developed on the fly to determine player interaction with the object (or just have the object invisible to everyone else, which makes for people standing there talking to... well nothing) and all of this data adds to the game server. Ideally, the way the MMO industry needs to move in order to develop an immersive experience is to dynamically provide game worlds based around a group dynamic, sometimes providing public areas to interact in that are accessible to a number of players. RPGs actually skipped over this. It was called multiplayer gaming, such as Neverwinter Nights, where the interaction is limited to a few computers as opposed to giving everyone access to everything.

This is why MMOs are painfully repetitive and ridiculous. The limitations of technology demand it until someone figures out a way to do it different.

[acegreco.livejournal.com]

Here I go cluttering stuff up with comments again.

The one MMO that I recall actually LIKING for the strategy they employed was Auto Assault.

Roam around in a destructive buggy of death. Your sole objective? Destroy shit. Sure, everything respawns, but you're moving at such a high speed that you're often not there when it does. Crazy jumps off ramps doing insane stunts. Equipping your vehicle with cool weapons that may not be the best tiered weapons available, but you can watch as bullets and flamethrowers tear into your enemies' chassis. Once your vehicle is turned into a flaming wreck, the handy automated repair service comes out to trail you back to your faction's closest repair facility, for a fair fee.

The downside? They canned it. Gave you a Tabula Rasa account for the deal.

Tabula Rasa. Now that was a little more standard fare for MMOs. WoW in space, essentially. Sure, there were dynamic battlefields and such, but I wasn't as entertained.

Now? They've closed this one down too. Rewarded everyone with memberships to Aion. I've gotten off this bandwagon long ago. :)

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

I detest computer roleplaying games of any kind, always have, for precisely these reasons. They have nothing to do with any sort of character or role, and are more akin to lightly themed legal casinos, with the same addiction problems.

[rodant-kapoor.livejournal.com]

For the longest time I wouldn't even call computer roleplaying games "RPGs" because, well, to whom are you playing this "role"? Tabletop was the only way to go, baby!

Then I caught myself roleplaying. Playing a catgirl character. I got so angry anytime I stepped in water I would attack the next group I saw. Levelled up and took a hovering ability instead of an extra attack just so I could levitate over water. It made the character more fun.

I remembered playing Diablo II iron-barbarian style, living off the land, never repairing or buying equipment out of scorn for civilization's soft ways. It was the most fun I had in that game.

For whom am I playing this role? Myself, it turns out. I'm still highly skeptical of any computer "RPG", but I think a computer game can qualify as an RPG if it doesn't cripple the player for trying to be interesting instead of being a min/maxer.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I think the Star Wars: Old Republic MMO from Bioware sounds promising. Apparently instead of giving everyone one-size-fits-all quests, each character class will have its own set of quests. You'll be able to help others with their quests if you go along, and to avoid the 'lining up at the quest mob/didn't I kill you already' kind of things, they'll have locked-out/instanced scenes so only one set of people in a given spot at a time.

If anyone could get real story and adventure into an MMORPG, it'd be Bioware.

[neosis.livejournal.com]

Yup. MMORPGs have two things that are (arguably) better than paper and pencil: sound and graphics. But that may be entirely dependent on your gaming group...

I'm on and off with MMORPGs, I played WoW originally to explore the game world and see what it was like. Then we switched to running dungeons with friends, and eventually running raids with a large group of friends. However, a combination of real life time pressure and the social dynamics of WoW managed to ruin both those activities for me. So, I canceled my account. Currently, I doubt I'll start it back up again, there's really nothing for me to go back to now, my game friends have mostly quit or are too busy to play with me.

You know, we should just play Hackmaster instead. :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Did you hear the 2nd (5th?) edition of Hackmaster is coming out this summer?

[ronyon.livejournal.com]

Pyat, I see the glimmerings of a great idea in the wreakage that is MMorgs.
My boy plays Maple story which is filled with official ways to tie one character to another: Marriage , Adoptions, Clans, whatever. Each has an mechanical advantage, which is more reason than I have had to hang out with some of the bums Ive played with in table top rpgs.
Still this aint good enough.
What if the only source of improved power was interaction with other players.
Maybe each new character should have to enter a secret about them selves, would receive a PC as a Rival, or one as a mortal enemy.A love interest, as souls mate. A master and an apprentice.All random , with reasons for these things entered mad lib style , which wouldn't always match, but in RL that's true too.
The key would be you advance by finding secrets from those on your list of significant others (friend and foe alike ). Or Meeting your master, and becoming his student, with mechanical benefits for each of you.
Or killing things-more things than your rival, and letting him know about it. Other skills that are better than him are good too.
The key here would be to encourage churn.To do this there are no instant messages, just messages carried by other PCs.
Where is your true love?
Could be anywhere, better start asking people.
Still pretty stilted but better than usual.
Player hating is averted , talkers get what they want faster , and killing has to be personally significant to get you anything.
Now what if you had also and option to hand out quests to people.Lock in that quest and keep it , and it would be worth more. Dont want to dirty your hands on your filthy rival?
Make his death a quest-for some random guy,that you have never met.
Hmm, if you get a boost every time you better him , it would pay for you each to find the other and set up shop across from each other and take turns being better. Cheesy but social. Better make rival-dom a limited time offer.
Now one unofficial chat room could ruin all of this , but hey, why play talky game if your just going to cheat?

Well that was fun. Back to my M+M necromancer!

[neosis.livejournal.com]

I hadn't, but since you mentioned it I looked around and found the Hackmaster Basic Combat Example (http://www.kenzerco.com/free_files/HMb/HMb_combat_example.pdf). It looks like a pretty neat system.

The critical hit/fumble system of too many tables looks to have been dropped from the basic system... That's probably a good thing.