In a classic sense of single player RPG the player changes the game world. I.e. the player uses some magic spell to collaps the home of an evil dragon. In a single player game this is not much of a problem, but in a MMORPG you just can't add such fragile content which will be "done" in one month and not accessable to the rest of the game community. In a common MMORPG the dragon will be back again, once we have destroyed him, which is unsatisfying, isn't it ? Well, we need new ways to change a gameworld, more of a dynamic, bigger plot where many people are able to partcipate. We need something which will create some kind of history, but what will reuse content to save budget. I would like to discuss some way to establish a changing world while keeping an eye on budget and feasability. What comes to mind is changing plot and mobs for certain locations. Lets say we have 3 locations, a dungeon, a ruin, a castle and some kind of mob factions like a dragon and his minions, a goblin hord, some vampire lord, a bandit party. The game or some designer will deploy a faction to a certain location and the according quests (or just a sub-set of quests) will be activated in the surrounding towns. The task is to weaken the according faction. After weakening the according faction it will flee or will be destroyed in a final quest attempt. This will leave the location empty for some time up to when a new faction will be deployed. An other, quite often used method is to establish some kind of area conflict. Players have to conquer castles or areas to get some kind of advantage. So, the world changes, more in a politcal sense, but nevertheless it changes. Well, we have some "events" which will change the world, but we need the player to "feel" the changes. An easy way to do this is to introduce some kind of ingame newspaper. Here you could read about "world changing" events like "Dragon has been banished from castle". An other way to let the player feel it is to let npc gossip about the current state of the world or influence the economy (increase prices of weapons while nearby towns are under attack). Any comments or ideas ? -- Ashaman

Although players still often see through it, a very interesting system was WoW's "phasing system", introduced in Wrath of the Lich King. You could go to an area that was taken over by enemies. After killing them and completing a few quests, it becomes an ally-controlled town, and you will always see it that way. However, a new player coming along will not see you, and will again see it as an enemy controlled town. I think the expansion used this system quite well.

I remember pondering this very issue and it occured to me that there was an answer, based on extrapolating something from Everquest. It is also based on the fact that every soldier, even ones whose deeds were not great enough to get into the history books, will have stories to tell.

To spice things up, guides and GMs (those poor saps who deal with the in-game 'petition' complaints system) would sometimes go out and start a story. It could be as simple as sitting down and doing some fishing or it could involve rounding up some players to go off on a snark hunt. The point was that the event was a one-offl; once, we even summoned players to a massive PVP arena and geared them up for gladiatorial combat. I think the winner got a prize.

And I got thinking... Why can't you make a great one-off where half of the server will be involved?

Let's say that your new expansion starts with an ancient fortress overrun. Why not let your players be the garrison, holding back the horde right up until the gates are breached. If this coincides with the moment that the new expansion goes live, you have quite a memorable moment. It is one thing to log in after patch day and see the Elven city in ruins, but quite another to have been there when it happened.

Take it one step forward; what if you could change the game world by laying siege to the villain's castle. All of those high level people could go into the keep, with each raid group given their own lieutenant to fight, then one group (probably the first to drop their target) gets to fight the warlord himself. As other raids come in, they can join them. It could take hours of combat before the siege ends and the warlord falls.

But what about the lower level people? Small groups of lower level characters will be needed too; maybe you are only lvl 20 and so will never be able to kill the warlord, but what if you could boast that you were in the strike team who opened the gates to let the raids in? What if you could tell the tale of how you destroyed the orb of power that made the warlord invincible, albeit still beyond your personal skill to slay?

Every battle is made of a hundred personal tales of victory or defeat, so why not let people have their moment. Even if there are a hundred stories, at least one of them is yours...

The problem with designing cooperative content for both high levels and low levels players is that at some point, there are only high level players. It might work for a few months with powergamers at max level and casuals at mid level. After that, everyone will want to go kill the big boss and not the yard trash because the loot is better.

Then you have the problem where you put 3000 friday night heroes with a one-shot common goal. Everyone who play these games wants to be the hero who slays the mighty beast, not a janitor clearing the yard trash. You either need to have a lot of mighty beasts to accomodate everyone, lessening the worth of a kill or make them so powerful only the most organized guilds can take them down, putting out of reach of casual gamers. If they are easier to kill for casual gamers, big guilds can just steamroll through every lair and clear the whole world in a matter of days.

If it took weeks to conquer a lair, then it might work. With a system like the Public Quest system from Warhammer Online, there might be a way to allow everyone to participate and share the rewards. You just need to make sure the climatic moment happens at prime time and not at 3am on a tuesday morning.

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Original post by Tiblanc You just need to make sure the climatic moment happens at prime time and not at 3am on a tuesday morning.

With an MMO, where would you need to be in the world for it to be prime time rather than early/late o'clock?

There are only two realistic ways to do it. The first is to put the dragon on a repsawn timer. This at least gives the players that join later in the game a chance to kill him. You could always set a flag against players so that once they have killed him, subsequent kills get no loot. This should help guard against high level characters farming the mob. It also means the mob can roam around in the open game world.

The other way is with instancing, but generally, whatever goes on in the instance is not really connected to the game world. Following jackolantern1's comments, you could end up instancing vast amounts of the game world. If player A frees a town from the enemy, he'll see it as friendly. Player B hasn't done that yet, so it's an enemy controlled town. That's two instances. Once player B cleans up the town, he can share the same town instance with player A.

Champions Online do something similar with 'crises zones'. These are adapted versions of some of the game maps where there is a large scale mission going on. Players enter the crises zone instance together, complete it (either as a team or individually) and then transfer to the non-crises version of that zone.

It works pretty well, and gives a similar feeling to how Prince of Cats describes being involved in a large battle, and then seeing the aftermath.

Let everyone go through the same content, then based on what all the players have done in a certain time change the world.

For instance something like atlantis floating or sinking is dependant on several spells staying maintained. If more people do the mission the destroy one of those spells than to save them, the city sinks. In the end you're going to need awesome story writing and keep a lot of things in "rumor tense", and have several success/breaking points(your party was successful, allies weren't).


I'd also add a sort of choose your own adventure setting to the whole thing. So after sinking Atlantis the community can work for restoring atlantis, or uncover some dwarven city(depending on what most the community does).