Hello.. I was just thinking about story's in Offlien RPG, and MMORPG's.. Not a story in perticular, but well.. My thoughts: An RPG needs a full storyline, with a beginning a plot and a ending to finish the game, But what about MMO's. Let me explain; Cause of players logging in on mmo's everyday, I'd say there doesnt need to be a full story. cause it never will come to an end. If there would be a end in a mmo, players stop playing a mmo when they have finished the game, thats not supposed to happen right? It would need some sorta open ending.. Like, killing a Boss Monster wouldnt end the game or anything. Well, whats your opinion on this? Regards, Sven

Quote: Original post by djnevs
Hello..

I was just thinking about story's in Offlien RPG, and MMORPG's..
Not a story in perticular, but well..

My thoughts:
An RPG needs a full storyline, with a beginning a plot and a ending to finish the game,
But what about MMO's.

Let me explain;
Cause of players logging in on mmo's everyday, I'd say there doesnt need to be a full story. cause it never will come to an end.
If there would be a end in a mmo, players stop playing a mmo when they have finished the game, thats not supposed to happen right?
It would need some sorta open ending..
Like, killing a Boss Monster wouldnt end the game or anything.

Well, whats your opinion on this?

Regards,
Sven

Personally, I prefer RPG to MMORPGs for that exact reason and it's a good one. But think about this.

RPGs, you go across a straight line that's made for you. MMORPGs you can carve your way anyway you'd like, and interacting in a way which involves a story. Basically it's what D&D tried to accomplish in the 70's and 80's by making an open storyline and it's up to the players. Like beating the major boss, think back to the end of Dogma after Bethany and co. released God and saved the universe from being destroyed. Basically everyone pretty leaves and continues with their life. They just saved the world. Big deal, the question is what's next? So you've just stopped the Boss of Doom from destroying the world. After that, you find the next adventure or the huge treasure cache waiting for you.

This open-endness of course comes with responsibility on both the players and the creator, something that isn't really needed in RPGs, and encouragement for obvious reasons.

MMORPGS leave the choices to the players and doesn't exactly encourage and embrace roleplayers and so the art just dies out leaving treasure hunters, and PKers. You have better control in a campaign, and even then, you will get problem players.

I'm sure I'm wrong of course. :)

[Edited by - ckun on August 17, 2007 6:04:27 AM]

There's no reason there couldn't be a linear mmo with a definite ending (I would play it), and there are certainly single player rpgs which are free-roam and have no story.

If an MMO had an ending, the player might restart the game with a different character, especially if making different choices in the game would open different branches to explore, and you could use the first character's achievements to help the second character, or the second character to repair the first character's mistakes. Or, perhaps it would be an mmo where the game story was more like anime episodes and they released a new one each month. Each episode would have it's own mini-ending. A player just joining the game would have all the existing episodes to play through, while an old player would play the new ones as they came out.

I tried really hard to write something short and intellectually stimulating, but I only got as far as making a joke about World of W(e buy Islands to keep our Robot Dinosaurs on)craft before I had to delete everything and try again.

I think the best way to have good plot in an MMO is uber-episodic content. (an example will be easier than a normal explanation, I tried it.)

All players are red or blue, because I said so. If you are red, then you are on the left side of the topmap, and if you are blue, you are on the east side.

You spend the first month foraging for XP and gathering skills when suddenly Giant Death Aliens land in the smack middle of the map. This creates tension, because the aliens don't belong there. Players go to check it out, but nothing happens. Players even kill some at outposts and sell their junk to vendors for not enough money. The next month comes and the Aliens have built a fortress. The next month, and there is suddenly a giant robot that kills everything, which spawns at the fortress and patrols until the combined might of the two sides kills the thing.

Ok, that's four months. That's the main story arc so far.

Players who start the game in month 1 start in friggen eden, where there is joyus XP to be had by all. Month two, those players begin killing aliens. What about new players? They must also begin killing aliens, because if the players were still in friggen eden, then the aliens wouldn't be there yet. And if the aliens weren't there yet, they'd be playing an entirely different game than the people who were playing in a friggen-invaded friggen-eden.

So in order for everyone to stay with the plot, there has to be some way for the newbies to lvl while being equally displaced from their XP gardens. The Players (the actual people) can't be equally displaced (because they haven't all played as long), but they can still come to dislike the alien presence at the same time as everyone else. They'd have a sense of community with each other and involving the plot that way.

The next month, everyone would go back to XP foraging when they realized they couldn't break into the fortress, and newbies during that month would be dealing with the same thing as the older players, even if only on a smaller scale. But, anything that changed, smoking craters for instance, would still be a part of the world. The oldest players would see them as scars on their homeland, but for the newest players, they would have always been there.

That's a different kind of model that World of We're-dirty-filthy-richcraft, which is divided into areas and based on the player's lvl, and not the plot. It works fine, but they can't draw people in to the plot. Which is sad, because there are some really well written books ingame.

But that seems to be the only way to do it. Each episode can be self contained, meaning the plots all make sense and have endings, but then after that there's another episode which means another month subscription. Plus, there would be the impetus of knowing you were actually missing something that would make people rush out to buy it.

Hmm good point..

Actually not a bad idea.

But, what if. everything end at a point..
The programmers / desingers / thinkers are out of idea's?
Or, everything that has to be done, is done already.
What would happen to the game next month?

Time would just freeze, and people will stop playing because there is nothing left to play for.

What happens when they run out of ideas? They starve. It's a good reason to keep the content flowing.

You're right though, it would be a huge task and probably wouldn't work out if someone tried it anytime soon. But there doesn't have to be a lot of exposition. If players heard there would be a siege, then they've just got to go around picking up junk to survive the siege during one period, and then fight the invaders in the next.

Even if it didn't work well, the dynamics would be pretty interesting I think. If there was a fight filled with mobs of all levels, and all the players were fighting them, then it would be a weird sort of comradery between players that I haven't seen in a game before.

I don't know if it would work, but I am interested enough that I want someone else to try it with their money.

Even though it wasn't very successful, The Matrix Online had a pretty good storyline for an MMORPG along with a staff who would update and add to it biweekly or so. Other than that, I haven't really seen any MMOrpgs with a viable storyline, where you actually play to accomplish some goal of w/e that changes the world you play in.

How about an MMORPG where the 'towns' are not only separated by location but also by their time in the storyline? Each player character would do something to progress to the next time period. So everytime you log in, everyone is on the same page. The town in period 2 would look a bit different from that in period 1.

The ending period would be one where the player could just hang out and go sightseeing at places normally infested by monsters. (Either that or the ending period is even more heavily infested by monsters.)

The disadvantages here is that the time stages divide the players. But I would assume that players who like this idea prefer progression over seeing all players in different story time.

Several MMOs have had episodic content, of particular note to me was Asheron's Call. They had a scenario rather similar to what you described, except it was Shadows(shaped like people, only black and see through) instead of aliens. The Shadows came and they had a huge war, which effected the world perminantly. It became a big part of the game's story. They had world changing events, and had monthly updates which drastically changed the worlds. Cities were destroyed, huge enemy spires torn down. They even did character driven events. They had a patch one month where you chose sides, to defend or attack a seemingly evil creature. The events that occured on each server were determined by whether or not the creature had been destroyed on that world yet. It was a fairly intense experience. Also, the monthly updates allowed the addition of newer small quests and easy fixes to imbalances.

I would personally absolutely love to play an episodic MMO in which there are definitive time constraints. So, while it might have monthly updates, it also only lasts, say, 6 months. Having played many many MMOs, I really dislike the fizzle-out-boredom you feel at the end. If I knew the current story was only going to last 6 months, I would be far more likely to wait out that subscription and play to the end. The stories could even be set in the same world, use the same game engine, and just have a new one every year, just as long as the characters don't carry over. Once I knew that I enjoyed that companies game, and that world to play in, I would absolutely purchase my subscription up front.

I'm just sick of getting into a game and having the only goal be to get my next skill. If there was some sort of epic battle I could participate in for an endgame, or some sort of conclusion to a smaller part of the story I'd feel better about it. It really just feels like you're wasting time eventually, trying to get your imaginary numbers higher than the other guy's.

Actually even to this day with almost 10 years of mmog experience and played most of the mmos/betas there is i still find my time in ac the best and most well spent. I remeber that shadowevent you were talking about. I remember hunting that large balzammon balrogg thingy acroess the world or when he attacked that place on the hill ( sorry names escape me )
And really good updates each month and you actually had to explore and find them. also making old places more attractiv with new events and such. Miss that time.


Zeusbas Blakhouse of TD =)