Neener neener (AKA: I told you so!)
So I made a post about WoW beta here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/gravito/8688.html
You'll notice I didn't bother posting anything else after that. Why? Because I finally played PvP and it just plain sucked. You've got Orcish hordes against Alliance zergs and no one ever "wins" anything. DAOC is just plain better when it comes to the PvP element.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure Blizzard has filtered through all the emo-trash on LJ to find my journal and begun making changes immediately (yeah, right), but they're already years of development behind DAOC and Planetside. The only thing they can do at this point is steal their ideas in a futile attempt to "catch up".
What it comes down to is something that many in the MMORPG industry have theorized: providing a "treadmill" is the only sure way to ensure the player is captivated. Without a treadmill, the user hits end game, of which, WoW has none. Or certainly, none to speak of.
Don't feel cheated. You *did* get to play the game, and thank god you didn't spend years of play before you figured out how boring the game was ultimately going to be. You can still sell your character on Ebay or wherever or make a killing farming gold. But I encourage you, stop now, before it becomes an extra hit on your credit card every month.
Before I continue, I need to define some additional terms. The three types of gamers that come to MMORPGs are the crafter, the competitor, and the achiever.
The crafter wants to simply be known for his crafts, and wants everyone to come to him or learn their crafting from him. These people can drive an economy.
The competitor wants to be feared. Or have everyone on the forums associated with such a game singing tales of their deeds. They want to be envied, reviled, and lauded on their might alone.
The achiever wants to accomplish something that gets the developer's or playerbase's response, usually in some way of finding something unique in the lore or a location unexplored in the game. He or she doesn't care so much about the user's input as they do the developers. They also pride themselves on being the first to document new content.
There is also the griefer, a fourth type, who wants negative attention from the developers. They want to be a thorn in the side of the devs. Generally speaking, they are VERY few and far between. A *real* griefer will not talk to you in game, unless they are exploiting a chat bug. People often call people that kill others without regard to their well-being griefers, but if they are not exploiting a bug or unintended feature of the game to do harm, they are not griefing.
Here are some of the things a great MMORPG would implement:
1) A hardcore "kill anyone, anytime, get some of their loot" server option. (Turbine:Darktide, UO:At Release, DAOC:Mordred - Note: No loss of equpiment on death means this server doesn't really qualify as "hardcore")
Regardless of whether or not *you* will play on it, this kind of server does well and has a loyal player base because of one sole reason: FEAR. From day one, you are at risk of losing loot and money on death to any of the other players. Groups will form to protect each other and eventually other new characters as they see fit. From log in to log out, you can be attacked, and thus you put emotion into gameplay. Anger and rage at someone for killing you for a "political reason" is just one of the various forms of entertainment on such a server. You actually grow to care, and in doing so, feel more immersed in the gameplay. Darktide for Asheron's Call essentially grew into seperate fiefdoms of groups warring with each other on an occasional basis.
This also has the added benefit of taking a certain kind/type of powergamer off a regular server and puts them into a server where they are amongst others of their kind. In that aspect, the regular servers are then filled more with those who are achievers and less with those that are competitors. Competitors will arise on the regular servers in place of these other powergaming competitors, but they will not adversely affect the outcome of their server.
2) A player-driven economy. (Star Wars Galaxies, EVE Online, parts of UO, ??? - I have yet to see any other game that really does this well)
Imagine a world with no shopkeepers but thousands upon thousands of options available to players in the area of weapons, housing, armor, supplies, etc. *THAT* is a good MMORPG. One in which any changes made by developers have profound impacts on the economy. One where the resources are constantly changing and evolving (Star Wars) and some of the best resources are in harder to reach locations or involve some danger in obtaining (EVE).
Combining different elements from the masses of current MMORPGs already available can work into a solid system where a crafter can truly shine. They simply MUST be able to leave their mark on the world, however, and that includes the ability to name or label or leave their mark on the things they create. Most MMORPGs have this now. But very few have implemented a stat system so players can see who are the movers and shakers in the player-driven economies. Also, few have included the mechanisms required for crafters to easily obtained and barter for the resources they need and for those with resources to find the crafters who need them. The first to implement such a system may very well be *the* RPG.
The way a player driven economy would work with the various types of gamers would be like this:
Competitors <- Crafters <- Achievers <- Competitors
The competitor wants the best crafts. The crafter wants the best resources. The Achiever wants the best connections. Such is the circle, and it must be fufillable. Resource gatherers (achievers, in this instance) pride themselves on having something the crafters desire, and desire greatly. If they can pump resources to the crafters, they can be a supply line for the others. The problem with the SWG implementation is that the last part of the circle isn't closed. competitors do not feed the achievers. In fact, the achievers do all the work. Which leads me to the next point.
3) A highly-specialized crafting system with reciprocity. (None)
I have yet to see any game whatsoever do this. Which is why if you are an aspiring MMORPG developer, I highly encourage you to work on this immediately. It will take you to great places. This idea can promote you. This idea can make you *it*.
Take the fictional MMORPG I now dub, "Legend". Legend is a MMORPG set in a far off planet with 5 races: Elf, Human, Orc, Dwarf, and Hobbit. Legend has magic, and there are four different elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Air; three types of physical damage: Slash, Pierce, Bludgeon.
Sound familiar? Well, it is basically any and every RPG out there. The problem with current RPGs is that they approach crafting from the position that someone who goes down the line of armorcrafting should be able to make multiple types of armor. But, that is the entirely WRONG way to do it.
Now, before you flip out and say I am limiting gameplay, let me finish the whole thing. Players should not be limited to what they can and cannot do. Anyone can make anything or do any craft. It all comes down to time invested.
In "Legend" I make Oggk, an Orc weaponsmith. He specializes in making orcish weapons. When a competitor-type player goes to the "Cave of Fire" with one of my orcish daggers, by using it there, the weapon loses condition and needs repaired. The player brings it back and I repair it. Because the weapon has been in the Cave of Fire and used on fire elementals, I can also upgrade it with a "fire slashing" modification. The player disagrees, because he intends to stay in the fire cave, and a fire dagger would do him no good there. So instead, I give him a brand new dagger (which is better because I've been making daggers for a while) and pocket the other one.
You can eventually see where I'm going with this. An achiever-explorer player, having visited the cave, has found "silver fire dust" which can be conditioned to help me make the fire dagger. I implement this into the new weapon and create: "The orcish dagger of flame". In doing so, I have increased my skill in three different types of general specializations (orc, slash, fire), and also on a very specific specialization (orc/slash/fire).
So then another competitor-player Elf comes to me with a Flaming Elven Longsword which he wants modded/spec'd or upgraded. The individual that originally made it for him was not well-versed in making elfish slashing fire weapons, but was better than I was in making Elven weapons. It will then not hurt the Elf to have me fine-tune the slash and fire aspect of his weapon, and in turn, I will learn a bit from the craftsmanship of the Elf.
This can be expanded in ever increasing ways. Suppose I take on an apprentice as a feature of the game. By being my apprentice, the crafter-player Mikko the Hobbit gains a bonus to Orcish-fire-slashing weapons. But, up until now, he specialized in Hobbit-air-slashing weapons, so what he can learn from me is thrice the rate of experience to his slashing (since he's fairly new at making these kinds of weapons, but wants to match me in short time) and two times the rate of experience in both Orc and Fire. He can never "best" my experience, but he can catch up to me in due time.
By being my apprentice, I get more points that I can use to max out abilities in crafting, and perhaps branch into new areas.
Lastly, In "Legend" there is, of course, legendary weapons. Suppose one of my Orc-fire-slash swords was used to kill a rare NPC. The competitor-player, Gluk, that does so may bring it back to me for a rare upgrade. Or, perhaps I'll condition it for him. Or maybe, I'll take it and give him an equivalent sword that is newer. But suppose he keeps it. Eventually, he forgets to condition it and it breaks. Then, later, a Hobbit achiever-explorer finds the remains of the Orcish Flaming Sword of Gluk. He does a lore quest to find out more about it and discovers I (Oggk) originally crafted it for him. But I'm offline. What is he to do? Well, a bit more research indicates that Mikko is online, who has served under me for quite some time. He takes the sword to Mikko, who combines his skill in making Hobbit weapons with the knowledge he's learned form me to transform the sword into a legendary weapon fit for a Hobbit.
And thus Bilbo obtained "Sting". Or well, not really, but you get the idea. Perhaps there is bonuses for the original crafter, or someone who has apprenticed under him or her to crafting such a weapon. No MMORPG had bothered to get as dedicated with their crafting system as this, but it covers all aspects, from the competitor, to the achiever, to the crafter; and it does it in such a way that one cannot mistake the true intracasies involved. No MMORPG saves stats on weapons and who they go through, yet you could expect many in "Legend" to know exactly where their weapon has been, and the great players who once wielded, crafted, and transformed it. In this fashion, weapons that become useless can again become great.
4) A do-anything skill-based system. (Asheron's Call, UO, Star Wars Galaxies, Planetside, Eve - kind of)
The purely class-based system is flawed. It's so flawed, that the only one that has really ever done well is Everquest, and it looks as if World of Warcraft will do well, at least for a while. DAOC gets around this by having extremely modified classes. Every change to the balance of the game is debated heavily by developers. But even DAOC has it huge problems. A plethora of population-related issues has caused developers to use uneven classes, in effect, to balance the numbers advantage of other realms.
Another aspect of this is letting players choose a "faction" or race that affects what kinds of skills they can end up learning, or how well they learn them. While this adversely affects the do-anything, be-anyone, kind of play that allows developers to make changes without players complaining vehemently on forums, it doesn't prevent someone from trying something unique, and possibly benefiting from it somehow.
"No one wants to be 'keeping up with the Joneses' anymore. Instead, we try to bring them back down to our level." This is a quote I made in 1999 on some forum like Kuro5hin. While it has real world ties, it also applies to the class-advantage-envy that affects games like Dark Age and Everquest. Players are more easily convinced that they are being exploited by someone with a better advantage or skill, only available to them, than they are of suggesting that a requisite skill be added to their class.
In a sense, everyone wants equality, yet when they have it, they get bored and leave. It's a problem that plagues MMORPGs. As others have noticed, in an offline RPG, a player *is* the unique individual amongst a sea of NPCs. In an MMORPG, the player is essentially an NPC. Eye candy, such as that in World of Warcraft, does wonders for someone new to the world of MMORPGs, having maybe only seen EQ and DAOC played by others.
5) A working interface. (WoW, Asheron's Call, Eve)
For those who have played other games: Gameplay, Interface, and Story matter. WoW only has Interface. Gameplay is good, but fails at higher levels, and Story, while it exists, is hardly entertaining. It has no true sense of learning the Lore of the land. Asheron's Call, which had an extensive month-to-month plotline, is the only game I know of that has done Story right. It also had an awesome Interface that did not require use of the mouse at all. A player could use the keyboard entirely for targetting and selecting enemies that were available on-screen.
Unfortunately, no other RPG I know of (save maybe Eve) can say that they have this, which is why people often make reference to "twitch-gamers" in MMORPGs. If you can see it on the screen or on radar, you should be able to select it from the keyboard-only, even if it means cycling through other targets.
I have not been keeping a running tally of the games that did things right over those that didn't. No game currently meets the specifications for a "great game". You can tell some games, AC, SWG, and Eve, are more favored by me than others. But these games lack in eye-candy and appeal. Others, like Planetside, are great, but suffer from balance issues and the fact that they are nothing more than pay-by-the-month versions of other games (In Planetside's case, Tribes 2).
If you'd like to pick my brains more about this, you can post an anonymous comment, or email me at raize@gravito.com. Please stay on topic. :)
You'll notice I didn't bother posting anything else after that. Why? Because I finally played PvP and it just plain sucked. You've got Orcish hordes against Alliance zergs and no one ever "wins" anything. DAOC is just plain better when it comes to the PvP element.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure Blizzard has filtered through all the emo-trash on LJ to find my journal and begun making changes immediately (yeah, right), but they're already years of development behind DAOC and Planetside. The only thing they can do at this point is steal their ideas in a futile attempt to "catch up".
What it comes down to is something that many in the MMORPG industry have theorized: providing a "treadmill" is the only sure way to ensure the player is captivated. Without a treadmill, the user hits end game, of which, WoW has none. Or certainly, none to speak of.
Don't feel cheated. You *did* get to play the game, and thank god you didn't spend years of play before you figured out how boring the game was ultimately going to be. You can still sell your character on Ebay or wherever or make a killing farming gold. But I encourage you, stop now, before it becomes an extra hit on your credit card every month.
Before I continue, I need to define some additional terms. The three types of gamers that come to MMORPGs are the crafter, the competitor, and the achiever.
The crafter wants to simply be known for his crafts, and wants everyone to come to him or learn their crafting from him. These people can drive an economy.
The competitor wants to be feared. Or have everyone on the forums associated with such a game singing tales of their deeds. They want to be envied, reviled, and lauded on their might alone.
The achiever wants to accomplish something that gets the developer's or playerbase's response, usually in some way of finding something unique in the lore or a location unexplored in the game. He or she doesn't care so much about the user's input as they do the developers. They also pride themselves on being the first to document new content.
There is also the griefer, a fourth type, who wants negative attention from the developers. They want to be a thorn in the side of the devs. Generally speaking, they are VERY few and far between. A *real* griefer will not talk to you in game, unless they are exploiting a chat bug. People often call people that kill others without regard to their well-being griefers, but if they are not exploiting a bug or unintended feature of the game to do harm, they are not griefing.
Here are some of the things a great MMORPG would implement:
1) A hardcore "kill anyone, anytime, get some of their loot" server option. (Turbine:Darktide, UO:At Release, DAOC:Mordred - Note: No loss of equpiment on death means this server doesn't really qualify as "hardcore")
Regardless of whether or not *you* will play on it, this kind of server does well and has a loyal player base because of one sole reason: FEAR. From day one, you are at risk of losing loot and money on death to any of the other players. Groups will form to protect each other and eventually other new characters as they see fit. From log in to log out, you can be attacked, and thus you put emotion into gameplay. Anger and rage at someone for killing you for a "political reason" is just one of the various forms of entertainment on such a server. You actually grow to care, and in doing so, feel more immersed in the gameplay. Darktide for Asheron's Call essentially grew into seperate fiefdoms of groups warring with each other on an occasional basis.
This also has the added benefit of taking a certain kind/type of powergamer off a regular server and puts them into a server where they are amongst others of their kind. In that aspect, the regular servers are then filled more with those who are achievers and less with those that are competitors. Competitors will arise on the regular servers in place of these other powergaming competitors, but they will not adversely affect the outcome of their server.
2) A player-driven economy. (Star Wars Galaxies, EVE Online, parts of UO, ??? - I have yet to see any other game that really does this well)
Imagine a world with no shopkeepers but thousands upon thousands of options available to players in the area of weapons, housing, armor, supplies, etc. *THAT* is a good MMORPG. One in which any changes made by developers have profound impacts on the economy. One where the resources are constantly changing and evolving (Star Wars) and some of the best resources are in harder to reach locations or involve some danger in obtaining (EVE).
Combining different elements from the masses of current MMORPGs already available can work into a solid system where a crafter can truly shine. They simply MUST be able to leave their mark on the world, however, and that includes the ability to name or label or leave their mark on the things they create. Most MMORPGs have this now. But very few have implemented a stat system so players can see who are the movers and shakers in the player-driven economies. Also, few have included the mechanisms required for crafters to easily obtained and barter for the resources they need and for those with resources to find the crafters who need them. The first to implement such a system may very well be *the* RPG.
The way a player driven economy would work with the various types of gamers would be like this:
Competitors <- Crafters <- Achievers <- Competitors
The competitor wants the best crafts. The crafter wants the best resources. The Achiever wants the best connections. Such is the circle, and it must be fufillable. Resource gatherers (achievers, in this instance) pride themselves on having something the crafters desire, and desire greatly. If they can pump resources to the crafters, they can be a supply line for the others. The problem with the SWG implementation is that the last part of the circle isn't closed. competitors do not feed the achievers. In fact, the achievers do all the work. Which leads me to the next point.
3) A highly-specialized crafting system with reciprocity. (None)
I have yet to see any game whatsoever do this. Which is why if you are an aspiring MMORPG developer, I highly encourage you to work on this immediately. It will take you to great places. This idea can promote you. This idea can make you *it*.
Take the fictional MMORPG I now dub, "Legend". Legend is a MMORPG set in a far off planet with 5 races: Elf, Human, Orc, Dwarf, and Hobbit. Legend has magic, and there are four different elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Air; three types of physical damage: Slash, Pierce, Bludgeon.
Sound familiar? Well, it is basically any and every RPG out there. The problem with current RPGs is that they approach crafting from the position that someone who goes down the line of armorcrafting should be able to make multiple types of armor. But, that is the entirely WRONG way to do it.
Now, before you flip out and say I am limiting gameplay, let me finish the whole thing. Players should not be limited to what they can and cannot do. Anyone can make anything or do any craft. It all comes down to time invested.
In "Legend" I make Oggk, an Orc weaponsmith. He specializes in making orcish weapons. When a competitor-type player goes to the "Cave of Fire" with one of my orcish daggers, by using it there, the weapon loses condition and needs repaired. The player brings it back and I repair it. Because the weapon has been in the Cave of Fire and used on fire elementals, I can also upgrade it with a "fire slashing" modification. The player disagrees, because he intends to stay in the fire cave, and a fire dagger would do him no good there. So instead, I give him a brand new dagger (which is better because I've been making daggers for a while) and pocket the other one.
You can eventually see where I'm going with this. An achiever-explorer player, having visited the cave, has found "silver fire dust" which can be conditioned to help me make the fire dagger. I implement this into the new weapon and create: "The orcish dagger of flame". In doing so, I have increased my skill in three different types of general specializations (orc, slash, fire), and also on a very specific specialization (orc/slash/fire).
So then another competitor-player Elf comes to me with a Flaming Elven Longsword which he wants modded/spec'd or upgraded. The individual that originally made it for him was not well-versed in making elfish slashing fire weapons, but was better than I was in making Elven weapons. It will then not hurt the Elf to have me fine-tune the slash and fire aspect of his weapon, and in turn, I will learn a bit from the craftsmanship of the Elf.
This can be expanded in ever increasing ways. Suppose I take on an apprentice as a feature of the game. By being my apprentice, the crafter-player Mikko the Hobbit gains a bonus to Orcish-fire-slashing weapons. But, up until now, he specialized in Hobbit-air-slashing weapons, so what he can learn from me is thrice the rate of experience to his slashing (since he's fairly new at making these kinds of weapons, but wants to match me in short time) and two times the rate of experience in both Orc and Fire. He can never "best" my experience, but he can catch up to me in due time.
By being my apprentice, I get more points that I can use to max out abilities in crafting, and perhaps branch into new areas.
Lastly, In "Legend" there is, of course, legendary weapons. Suppose one of my Orc-fire-slash swords was used to kill a rare NPC. The competitor-player, Gluk, that does so may bring it back to me for a rare upgrade. Or, perhaps I'll condition it for him. Or maybe, I'll take it and give him an equivalent sword that is newer. But suppose he keeps it. Eventually, he forgets to condition it and it breaks. Then, later, a Hobbit achiever-explorer finds the remains of the Orcish Flaming Sword of Gluk. He does a lore quest to find out more about it and discovers I (Oggk) originally crafted it for him. But I'm offline. What is he to do? Well, a bit more research indicates that Mikko is online, who has served under me for quite some time. He takes the sword to Mikko, who combines his skill in making Hobbit weapons with the knowledge he's learned form me to transform the sword into a legendary weapon fit for a Hobbit.
And thus Bilbo obtained "Sting". Or well, not really, but you get the idea. Perhaps there is bonuses for the original crafter, or someone who has apprenticed under him or her to crafting such a weapon. No MMORPG had bothered to get as dedicated with their crafting system as this, but it covers all aspects, from the competitor, to the achiever, to the crafter; and it does it in such a way that one cannot mistake the true intracasies involved. No MMORPG saves stats on weapons and who they go through, yet you could expect many in "Legend" to know exactly where their weapon has been, and the great players who once wielded, crafted, and transformed it. In this fashion, weapons that become useless can again become great.
4) A do-anything skill-based system. (Asheron's Call, UO, Star Wars Galaxies, Planetside, Eve - kind of)
The purely class-based system is flawed. It's so flawed, that the only one that has really ever done well is Everquest, and it looks as if World of Warcraft will do well, at least for a while. DAOC gets around this by having extremely modified classes. Every change to the balance of the game is debated heavily by developers. But even DAOC has it huge problems. A plethora of population-related issues has caused developers to use uneven classes, in effect, to balance the numbers advantage of other realms.
Another aspect of this is letting players choose a "faction" or race that affects what kinds of skills they can end up learning, or how well they learn them. While this adversely affects the do-anything, be-anyone, kind of play that allows developers to make changes without players complaining vehemently on forums, it doesn't prevent someone from trying something unique, and possibly benefiting from it somehow.
"No one wants to be 'keeping up with the Joneses' anymore. Instead, we try to bring them back down to our level." This is a quote I made in 1999 on some forum like Kuro5hin. While it has real world ties, it also applies to the class-advantage-envy that affects games like Dark Age and Everquest. Players are more easily convinced that they are being exploited by someone with a better advantage or skill, only available to them, than they are of suggesting that a requisite skill be added to their class.
In a sense, everyone wants equality, yet when they have it, they get bored and leave. It's a problem that plagues MMORPGs. As others have noticed, in an offline RPG, a player *is* the unique individual amongst a sea of NPCs. In an MMORPG, the player is essentially an NPC. Eye candy, such as that in World of Warcraft, does wonders for someone new to the world of MMORPGs, having maybe only seen EQ and DAOC played by others.
5) A working interface. (WoW, Asheron's Call, Eve)
For those who have played other games: Gameplay, Interface, and Story matter. WoW only has Interface. Gameplay is good, but fails at higher levels, and Story, while it exists, is hardly entertaining. It has no true sense of learning the Lore of the land. Asheron's Call, which had an extensive month-to-month plotline, is the only game I know of that has done Story right. It also had an awesome Interface that did not require use of the mouse at all. A player could use the keyboard entirely for targetting and selecting enemies that were available on-screen.
Unfortunately, no other RPG I know of (save maybe Eve) can say that they have this, which is why people often make reference to "twitch-gamers" in MMORPGs. If you can see it on the screen or on radar, you should be able to select it from the keyboard-only, even if it means cycling through other targets.
I have not been keeping a running tally of the games that did things right over those that didn't. No game currently meets the specifications for a "great game". You can tell some games, AC, SWG, and Eve, are more favored by me than others. But these games lack in eye-candy and appeal. Others, like Planetside, are great, but suffer from balance issues and the fact that they are nothing more than pay-by-the-month versions of other games (In Planetside's case, Tribes 2).
If you'd like to pick my brains more about this, you can post an anonymous comment, or email me at raize@gravito.com. Please stay on topic. :)