a few thoughts on RPGs

[wombat_socho]

If you've had to sit through this before, feel free to walk away and read something else.
If you have more insight into how MMORPG like World of Warcraft work than I do (THIS IS NOT HARD) I would appreciate your comments.

Comments

[edwarddain]

Don't play WoW, don't want to.

;-)

[wombat_socho]

I hear you. I know people who do, but never got the urge myself.

[haikujaguar]

I'm not sure what your question is...?

[wombat_socho]

Do the contemporary fantasy MMORPGs have anything more than an endless series of modules to offer? Can you build your own kingdom in the world of D&D Online? I'm assuming they don't; am I wrong?

[haikujaguar]

Of course not. If you could build your own kingdom, you could conceivably "win" the game and want to stop playing. The whole business model of MMPORGs is to always give you something more to aim for: more character development, more gear, more pets, more bling. All so that you never feel "done" so you never stop paying to play.

[wombat_socho]

I guess what I see as one of the major failures in fantasy MMORPG is the lack of a metagame, the ability to support actual nations within the game that can contend with each other as alliances and corporations do in EVE. You know...a crossbreeding of WoW with the Hundred Years War simulation Jim Dunnigan used to run. This would keep the interest of players and generate more plots and quests and missions than any single group of developers could possibly come up with.

[nornagest]

The standard D&D setting is actually a little more promiscuously mixed than you seem to be implying: the combat system is supposed to suggest Conan, while the thieving system is more like Fritz Lieber's Lankhmar stories and the magic system is (as you say) all Vance. (The framework D&D uses for clerical magic does appear to be original, more or less, although it has some clear Vancian DNA in it.)

That actually accounts for a lot of what makes D&D strange, archetype-wise; you've got all these archetypes from heroic fantasy running around in a world that's more like Middle-earth, and the two subgenres don't really play well with each other. Remember that in Tolkienian epic fantasy, victory isn't achieved by force of arms: it's only when you mix in sword and sorcery archetypes, which would be more at home scrapping with mindless beasts and evil cultists, that you get the odd ethnic-cleansing-as-a-sacred-calling bits that D&D has become infamous for.

[wombat_socho]

This is a good point. I hadn't been aware that they'd drawn on the Conan stories for the combat system, which looked like bog-standard medieval miniatures rules to me, but I had forgotten the ties to Fritz Leiber's work.

[darksumomo]

My wife plays Final Fantasy XI, which has only enough D&D in it so one can see the ghosts, and almost nothing of Tolkien left in it (there are orcs and elves in it, but that's about as close as it gets). It's very much a team game with all kinds of quests and missions. Solo level grinding just isn't done. It's also very social. I know of two couples that have met online and gotten married.

[wombat_socho]

Yes, but the world of FF XI is fixed, amirite? You can't just get together with your friends and carve a barony/county/earldom/kingdom out of the wilderness, can you? It sounds to me like all the other online games in that the computer GM is just running the parties through a series of modules.

[onsenmark]

IIRC, Vana'diel is pretty much a fixed world, unless Squarenix decides to make another expansion that adds a new continent to the mix. And that's doubtful, since they're basically working on FF XIV right now.

[therevdrnye]

I can't comment vis-a-vis WoW, being a City of Heroes player. Nevertheless, I'd have to guess that one problem faced by any software developer trying to address the question you are asking would be how to integrate a MUD-like free-form player-driven kingdon/barony/shire creation system into your existing world. Such a system would require planning for allotment of data space to *every* character for *every* player - not that 100% utilization would be expected (or achieved), but so that there should be enough resources for a reasonable projection of need

[wombat_socho]

If EVE is any example, I daresay there will be more than enough goons and/or griefers to trash any baronies that don't exert themselves enough to maintain their defenses.

[therevdrnye]

That depends on how (or whether) the developers decide to handle the PVP vs. PVE issue as regards personal domains, and it also depends on whether or not such domains can be owned by multiple PCs, or if PCs who have no domains can choose to be vassals or mentors to the domain holder. Those questions alone could, depending on their answers, require several man-years of programming effort to implement

[wombat_socho]

Moving long distances in EVE isn't as easy as it sounds, since most interstellar travel is through jumpgates, which in zero-sec space can be camped and/or bubbled, trapping ships in an interdiction field that keeps them from warping out to safety. Effectively, you can only move quickly in space where there aren't any gankers around, which is why it's a bad idea to travel alone. :)

Yeah, the economics of a medieval RPG are going to be a turnoff for some players, but you can rely on NPC seneschals to do some things for you. So I guess you'd wind up with a fusion of RPG (for the hacking and slashing, etc.) and RTS for building a barony.