Ponderings on uniquity among MMO players

Morkai1 · 2005-12-08T17:13:35

I've been thinking about this ever since I put down World of Warcraft and have summarily heard about it every other day from a die-hard player friend of mine with much more time on his hands. Is there the potential, given certain immobile tenets of MMO gameplay, for players to truly be unique, in both accomplishments and fame? As it stands now, fame in MMOs comes from player-base knowledge...and usually the "bad press" kind of fame. "Zabrox kills everyone that tries to quest in Dungeon 3," or "L33TD00D47 is a scammer, I'm his 200th victim!" I've been entirely unable to find any fame that came from an accomplishment of mine that was mine alone. Due to the nature of fair gameplay, a quest finale, even a grandiose one, is at its core a scheduled laser light show that awes the receiver, but will play again next week. I've played Anarchy Online, SWG, and WoW extensively (AO for 2.5 years) and completely lost touch with actual empathy for my damsel in distress/needy farm family/corporate sponsor. Since I could see 5 people in a row returning Farmer John's long-lost journal, getting the same heartfelt thankyou, and happily dancing around with their much-needed +4 demonslaying axe reward; it debased the characters and story elements to an assembly manual. I sought out good loot on database websites, traced what I would have to do to get it, and quickly skipped through dialogue I had heard in local chat channels 10 times already to receive the "now go get [x]" part. What I think would truly revolutionize MMO gameplay comes in two parts, and they're certainly a difference from the norm. 1: Instance your game world I don't know how feasible this is in practice, but bear with me. In concept at least, you design a persistent game world that is partitioned for each "group" that applies for their own experience. This could vary from 6 friends who bought the game at the same time, to a clan of 50 hard-core gamers, to a "pick-up" group tag that allowed in so many people and then cut off. Obviously this hasn't been thought through to completion, but give me a minute yet. In effect, you've eradicated the greifer contingent that plagues most mmo's. Your group of friends knows everybody, and probably sees eachother on a regular basis. Your assassin-playing bud isn't going to ninja the awesome loot that three of you worked towards for 4 hours because he isn't protected by internet anonymity. As a second, possibly more desirable effect, you've given true uniquity and role to each player. I remember when I first picked up AO on a week free trial, the ads described the Fixer class (aka theif/hacker) as an example, and I immediately wanted to be that well-known-in-hushed-circles fence: the guy that could get you what you needed. As I continued playing, however, I was in competition with 200 other aspiring gophers, and they all had my same skillset. The prevalent "role dictates interaction" problem with any MMO. Tank classes are called upon to get hit, DPS are told to fire on command, and healers are brought on only to heal. While function is nice, there's no room for stylization or individuality. No matter their elaborate back-stories, Aleshre and w33dz0r and hacker-dude and Cora were ALL run-buff machines and moderate DPS in combat. That was their extent of purpose to the community. With the instanced world option, you could very well be the ONLY jeweler in all of Mainport who's willing to take a skiff out to the ring isles to collect the necessary stones for someone's bracelet of healing. You become a name, role, character, and necessity in a multitude of others' play experiences. And so does everyone else in your world. 2: Give your world a dynamic and conditional regenerative property So your players (from the band of 6 that are always together, to the clan of 50 that split up into smaller adventuring groups to play out all sides of the drama) are completing quests, or hunting down certain breeds of dragon for material components, whatever your situation. Your mob population will by nature begin to drop as more creatures are found and killed, and quests will be used up over time. Some element of the game world and underlying code needs to be able to recognize what is lacking and create situations to repair the holes. Maybe your world in general is designed that dragon egg clutches are time-delayed capsules encased in ember deep within volcanoes, and over time the clutches eventually come to the surface or somehow break free and create a new populous location. Maybe some faction can gain power in a hub city after so many jobs are taken for specific npcs, which spawns a whole host of new jobs ranging from small-time work for your low level players up through 20-man tasks that take a week to complete. I guess what--in essence--I'm describing, is a persistent co-op game. A multiplayer online rpg. Of course, if you wanted, you could play along with 1000 other people and wage wars among eachother for the fate of the game's nation; but at the same time you could find 10 or 20 like-minded people and play together carving out personal roles in the world, working together to reach notable fame in the NPC audience, own a section of downtown, etc. -------------------------------- My question for anyone here is, is this even a feasible idea? As far as I've considered, the MMO gamer wants to be recognized for their RPG deeds, even if that's just "woah, nice armor, I haven't seen that before." In a world of 4000, where you're all trending towards a cookie-cutter character sheet, notoriety is nothing more than being at the top of a list or being the first crafter on a scene (and even that is very short-lived, see SWG). Maybe some other permanence gimmick can be a stop-gap towards this. For example, from what I can tell Huxley will be offering physical and exclusive realty ownership, meaning one specific player "lives" at the apartment on the corner of Main and 33rd street in downtown. (A far cry from the "housing" in AO: 300 people all used my front door, but I never saw a single one of them in my apartment) Has anyone else brainstormed anything they'd want to share on the possible advances for online RPG experiences to come? Last minute edit: I just realized what I'm proposing sounds just like a MUD, except you'd need to employ a whole host of game-masters and mods to run anything not controlled by the player. I definitely tip my hat to the imaginations and perseverence of MUD admins, but this is a different beast entirely.