Rift: Planes of Telara

[Dtrain]

Ghambit, you say some insightful stuff all the time, but you couldn't be more wrong on this point.

From a simple logistics standpoint you can never ever ever staff enough qualified people to accomplish the thing you are talking about. A GM would have to A) Identify what the player wanted by observing them, B) Identify any environmental concerns already in place (eg. static content,) C) Select the right content from their list of scripts, and maybe even D) Control for the unexpected. How many people working only on the above do you think it would take to cover just one server during peak times?

And then who is handling the other service related duties of the GM?

And how does a GM select players for these events? You're going to have plenty of players who don't get these events and feel left out, or that it is a waste of time (especially if their service related issue is not being resolved.)

Maybe if the MMO was charging something like $30 a month you could account for all of the above concerns, but then at that point I think you've got a player base paying for a service that will lose it's entertainment value that much quicker.

Actually, this reminds me of what SOE tried to do with the EQ Legends premium server. They did wind up with a core of dedicated players who loved the service, but they were not a significant enough community to expand the model.

[pxib]

I think it's easier to satisfy people with a reliable experience than an unreliable one. If you know what's going to happen, and it's going to be boring and frustrating, you can figure out exactly how to skip it and get on with the fun. Theme Park MMOs are full of this stuff. Quest lines you avoid, or figure out short cuts for. Starting areas, zones, and instances you preferentially avoid on alts. Those negatives fade into the background because you know where to go to find the stuff you love. The experience is always the same, so you can design your own "best of" reel. You may even recommend it to your friends and guildmates: "I love this quest. Just wait until you see the next part."

A single unreliable boring and frustrating moment can spoil your gameplay session. A roll of the dice determines whether you'll be happy or not, and even if it works out well you can't guarantee that you'll ever get to have that experience again... or even show it to somebody else.

[Ghambit]

I'm not saying this is a viable thing to do given the current state of the industry, but it's something many folks have been wanting to develop for a long time.  How many seminars must we quote where this stuff is discussed?  Trion is in the position to at least try.  So why not try?  At least in some capacity.  Maybe even make endgame a sandbox god-mode for some players, I dunno.

The logistical points you bulleted are not impossible to provide given the right set of tools.  It's all about the damned tools.; and they're out there, just not used...  either because they'd have to license from a 3rd party, spend sums of money developing it themselves, or just dont have the server architecture, let alone the design vision because most of the lead devs. are themselves fairly scripted individuals.

So a single GM dynamically managing an entire cloud of users is not an impossible task.  And in essence, this is what people who PAY monthly for an MMO sub. really expect.  Active, worthwhile game-mastering and support.  No one wants to simply pay for server usage, people expect to get more from a sub. than that.  Even more than a fancy script.  As for what the monthly charge would be, I'd be willing to bet people would pay $20+/month for an actively GMed game.  Actually, if you poll hardcore pen-and-paper players, most of the time that's probably what they spend to fulfill their campaigns on a monthly basis, especially if miniatures-based.  And many times those GMs are charging players for their time anyways (printing materials, campaign building, chargen, mapgen, and on and on).  WoTC was prepared to do it w/o even providing the GMs, just providing the tools... and people were ready to pay.  (they just failed in properly implementing it during a financial crisis, and had conflicts of interest internally).

Like someone said earlier, all you're essentially doing is expanding the NWN model.  A model that worked and everyone wanted as a persistent MMO, but hasnt happened yet save for a few heavily volunteered MUDs.
And you might THINK it's easier to satisfy people with a scripted "reliable experience," but tell that to the game studios, especially MMO devs.  They'd beg to differ given the current state of the genre.  The only success is WoW because they throw so much quality and content at you on a regular basis that it's impossible to really get through it all.  And even when you do, you're still left feeling empty from the meaningless carrots... the world goes on as scripted, over and over.  But games like WoW take too much money and time to make, which is why MMO's currently fail.

A good post-dev, server-side game, with plenty of realtime tools was always the intended future.  They're cheaper and quicker to chunk out and offer a more compelling game to the player if the sandbox runs deep enough.  Otherwise, you're just trying to emulate WoW or SWTOR (which may ultimately fail)... and you will fail at doing-so.

Also, no AI will ever substitute entirely for a skilled human in any 'RTS'.

[LK]

Again, a game designer relying on another human being, one who is likely less paid or treated inferiorly to the dev, to determine the quality of their game will never happen. It failed gloriously with Anarchy Online and an MMo is about delivering a fair, equal experience to ALL paying customers, not a select lucky few.

Players will likely want dynamic content a la AI Director in L4D. That is, random spawn / map generation. Also, othe players represent dynamic content: you never know what you'll run up against. A good game designer will leverage that and make PvP fun. Less content generation necessary.

[pxib]

And you might THINK it's easier to satisfy people with a scripted "reliable experience," but tell that to the game studios, especially MMO devs.  They'd beg to differ given the current state of the genre.

Easier than to satisfy them with an unreliable one? Have you got a counter-example in mind? Even EVE, the only MMO I can think of that comes close to qualifying (player managed rather than GM'd), is more reliable than what you're describing. And most of its players continue to spend most of their time playing in the most reliable portion of it. No successful MMO has based that success on how random and surprising the average playthrough is.

Yes, the dream of having a satisfying custom-tailored experience every time you logged on is beautiful and universally desired. It would be wonderful because it would be RELIABLY fun! It is also, manifestly, not what will be delivered in a massively multiplayer game. NWN (and other player-tools oriented games) have failed to change the world because too few people are simultaneously skilled at interactive storytelling and willing to do the heavy lifting required to implement it. It just does not scale.

DIKU absolutely does, without the risks that player generated "dynamic content" (like PvP) includes.

A GM, even assuming she works full time at minimum wage, supplies her own computer, works from home, and does her own accounting, costs at least $1500 a month. The $5 premium you have players paying to fund her means she has to regularly supervise 300 of them.

[Musashi]

I think 'dynamic content' is a buzzword that doesn't really exist.  In order for shit to be really dynamic it's going to have to be much more complex, and also much more difficult to build.  Dynamic content is going t have to be smart.  It's going to have to extrapolate data input, and be capable of rendering an environment and encounters when given a heavenly fuckton of choices.  Basically it's going to take some leaps in AI before shit like this is even possible.  It's going to take some leaps in processing power per dollar before making that kind of AI for a game intended to run on the average system is even worthwhile.

You can have your stupid triggered/random spawn bullshit, honestly.  It sucks.  It sucks on many, many levels.  It's one of those things that sounds cool to people who are staring at the prospect of hand painting content for the next two years, and yearning for some way to make it less tedious.  But it hasn't ever sounded good to me since the first time it was over-promised and under-delivered.  In lieu of something that actually approximates a real/believable environment, I'm much more happy with static mechanics that I can understand and manipulate.  And by that, I mean I'd rather play a game than have Raph's pseudo-dynamic world shoved up my ass.

With that said, it's not something I'm going to fight this game over.  Everybody's making these claims, so why not these guys?  I'm sure they're just trying to keep up with the Joneses.  I'm just saying I don't believe the hype.  I hope Hartsman makes a fool out of me.  Also, lol Raph is crazy.

[Ollie]

I have to echo the majority on this one. While I would personally enjoy a game as heavily GM-driven as Ghambit suggests, I very much doubt it would be feasible to develop or operate from a financial standpoint. The studio would have staff up the wazoo even after launch, creating a business model that's very hard to sustain once you aim past the small-scale idie project and towards triple-A land. I manage small teams in my day-to-day, and the HR costs tend to rack up like you wouldn't believe. I shudder to think how high the developer would have to scale monthly fees, cash-shop items and additional content just to scrape into the black.

Also, GM-driven content seems to run a tad contrary to the player-driven trend that's been up and about lately – player-created content, emergent gameplay and all that. Now, I'm not saying these two content creation models can't coexists in the same product, but given the cost and difficulty of developing a modern MMOG, a complex world with robust GM tools and procedures would crash us head-first into the cost-prohibitive wall.

Finally, there is the audience reception angle to consider. As unappealing as it may sound to some, there will always be a sizeable audience who like their entertainment predictable, repetitive and non-challenging. Cognitively, predictability can be soothing, since it affirms our perceptions with minimal resistance. The Diku is a good example of how this principle translates to MMOGs; it works in part precisely because it is so rigidly delineated and predictable. There is safety in its familiar framework. Some people are not likely to gravitate to a more dynamic environment even if you twist their tits with pliers.

As much as I like the idea, I'm afraid the GM-driven world is relegated to small-scale endeavours and niche audiences, not least due to the cost-prohibitive human component.

[Stabs]

Just a thought: what Trion mean by "dynamic" may have nothing to do with what Raph means by dynamic or expects Heroes of Telara to achieve. And I'll eat my hat if what they mean has something to do with moderating by hand.  

Second thought: it's pretty healthy that Raph drives engineers like Musashi and Brandon a little nuts. He's the ideas man, the visionary. Good ones should challenge the practical people.

[ajax34i]

Developers can't trust GMs to manage game content, nor would they want to.

Developers don't have to, the suits do.  This industry will have to eventually grow up and mature to the point where the code monkeys are just workers and the product is owned by the business / corp owner(s).  No more "it's my baby", no more Visions, please.

I'm not sure what's wrong with designing a (software) system for the purpose of having a team of people control it for a larger, public pool of users.  A lot of systems are operated that way, from amusement parks to airlines to, hell, the IT infrastructure of any corporation.  Hire and train content administrators (not more devs, not GM's), and design your software as a set of tools for these guys to manage the content after the game goes live.   They can even be paid in terms of user retention, and the company can hire more or fewer based on the success of the game.

Don't make an amusement-park game, don't make an unrestricted sandbox; make a tool that allows a specific employee team to create stories and content, and hire the appropriate team to run said tool to success.  Pay them according to their work.

[Lantyssa]

It's not running a ride though, it's hosting GM-driven events.  It might add a wonderful touch for those who get to participate, but the amount of content it generates is miniscule.  It's a terrible use of resources and will bankrupt anyone who tries it on the scales y'all are dreaming of.

Remember WISH?  That was their model.  Have 30 or so content people, normal $15 sub, and make a GM-driven world.  They got most of the way through production, looked at the numbers and results... and closed up shop.

Pex and his team as SOE?  They host a couple of parties or events through the various games.  They have to announce times and locations or else you would never stumble across them.  Even with more robust tools, I don't see how they could make more engaging content than their simple little events for that many people.  It works fine on the small scale, but trying to make huge events day after day isn't going to work.  And if you do it on that small scale... 99% of your customers won't be affected.

Utterly terrible use of resources to have more than a handful of people devoted to it.  That's a full team you could have devoted to permanent content.  Whether writing new variables for dynamic content, coders and designers for new systems, art guys, CSRs, etc.  Any of which would have a far greater impact to the player base.  WoW has over 200 North American servers.  Think about the size of the content team which would be needed to have a noticable impact.  Now add in Europe.  Take a small game, one or two servers.  What if they add another one or two?  The team they need just doubled, else you've cut content for all your existing customers.

It simply doesn't scale well above tiny MUD size.

[Draegan]

Maybe dynamic content just means it moves around a lot so it's always in a different place.

[Musashi]

I think Gambit's more or less talking about paying a dude to drive the game-play sort of like a D&D GM in a giant RTS where each player is a unit.  The tools he would have to have would be less challenging than what Raph wants, but still well out of the realm of possibilities at the moment.  That's before the problems you would have with preventing GMs from fucking up and costing you subs.  To say nothing of the cost of the GM's themselves.

Just a thought: what Trion mean by "dynamic" may have nothing to do with what Raph means by dynamic or expects Heroes of Telara to achieve. And I'll eat my hat if they what mean has something to do with moderating by hand. 

Second thought: it's pretty healthy that Raph drives engineers like Musashi and Brandon a little nuts. He's the ideas man, the visionary. Good ones should challenge the practical people.

Yes on thought one.  Yes on thought two. But I'm not sure Raph understands that pushing his ideas on people isn't always good.  There's no doubt he has good ideas from time to time.  But I worry about his visionary status sometimes when he seems to be so obstinate about these archaic social gaming ideas.  There's really nothing visionary about that idea.  It's pretty much dead already.  It may have been visionary when he and his contemporaries first thought of it.  But he's still talking about it as if it's a breath of fresh air that this game is including it, even though literally every game since SWG has had it in some form or another.  I wonder if he truly understands why it sucks.

Also, everyone, we should be grown ups and pass up this opportunity for a semantic discussion on the word dynamic.  It means what you think it means.  Happy?

[Ghambit]

Well, we're pretty much getting sucked into this discussion because it's still unclear how Trion intends to wield this word - "Dynamic."  Speculation breeds semantic discussion I guess.
But yah, it most likely means what we think it means. 

[kaid]

Maybe dynamic content just means it moves around a lot so it's always in a different place.

I am guessing it will be something like this. Basically you have the world with the normal static content but you also have the wild card rifts. From the sounds of it the rifts can open anywhere and once opened basically that area now basically becomes a phase similar to how cataclysm and wotlk work and now you are basically in a phased varient of that area. And to make things more dynamic you could potentially have cases where the heroes fail and now that rift stabalizes and is permanent so that area now always is in that elemental effected phase.

Doing it this way it would be pretty easy to have the game world between different servers have actual differences depending on if the heroes win or lose certain major rift battles. In one area a town could be a potential good vendor area and hub and on another server it could be taken over by the forces of death and so the quest paths on that server would go a different route.

From my reading it really sounds like this game is making use of two of the better new features of mmos produeced recently the PQ from warhammer and phasing from wow.

[Severian]

Asheron's Call.

[Mrbloodworth]

Is the dynamic content static, as in same package(s), just random as to where.

[Stabs]

Seemed to me from that interview that Scott was using the word dynamic to apply to a number of different design elements. he mentions that a rift is an example of dynamic gameplay that looks good for demos, implying there are other mechanics.

To list what I'd like to see:

- dynamic rare mob locations. No camping a spot for a rare spawn. WoW did this reasonably well with the outland rares (although tbh the main reason it worked well was because they weren't worth camping. It was horrible for the hunter pet in Sholazar and the cat in the Badlands back in Vanilla (Broken Tooth?)).

- dynamic mob stats. No "hit this with electric damage because this mob has -70% lightning resist".

- dynamic resource variables like SWG.

- dynamic resource spawns. If you mine all the silver the mine runs out. And more dynamic than WoW where you know after a while there's a mine node in a spot, it's just not up yet.

- dynamic NPC politics.

- dynamic player politics (like Eve).

- consequence laden damage from failing to cope with rifts. Eg a quest hub gets overrun and that content is unavailable until you drive the Triffids out.

[LK]

Don't mix up dynamic and random.

[Draegan]

What the heck is dynamic NPC politics?

[Stabs]

Well, you know how in WoW Horde and Alliance have an uneasy peace? I think it would be interesting to see a game where all out war could break out, then peace could be made and so on. So for instance maybe you can't enter Dalaran today because the Kirin Tor kicked out Horde and Alliance for fighting in the streets.

Of course this hits the zombies ate my banker issue that WoW had but solves it the other way (ie yeah, tough, you can't get your stuff out today).

[LK]

People don't really want to be locked out from content because of the actions of other people. Dynamic only works if the dynamic only changes your experience from your actions.

[Stabs]

Don't mix up dynamic and random.

This is a good point and I had to go and think quite hard about what I really mean here. I'm afraid we'll get into semantics to an extent, apologies all.

What I think of when I think of a game being dynamic is that the virtual world is a house of cards, with one part of it affecting the other parts.

Let me give an example using resource attributes. If metal has a Hardness of between 0 and 1000 and you determine this by rolling a random number, that's random. If however what happens in the world influences the stats then that's dynamic.

So for instance if Truesteel is a metal that only spawns on Dwarven lands and its hardness value is higher when the Dwarven King is honorable and lower when the Dwarven King is dishonorable that's dynamic. Break that treaty and your smiths are going to be very angry with you, Sire.

Raph made a very interesting comment a few weeks ago about how sporadic gameplay in things like Farmville which is generally despised by hardcore MMO gamers was loved by us in SWG when it was essentially the same mechanic. Set your harvesters up, log off for a week log back on and empty the hoppers.

I think he was wrong - superficially the mechanic looks the same but it's not the same at all.

The difference is the interconnectedness of all things in the virtual world.

If I'm playing Farmville I set up my farm, log off for a week and come back to bigger numbers.

If I'm playing SWG I set up my harvesters, log off for a week, come back, build enough Comp armour for me and my elite pvp crew to dress to kill and go take a Rebel base, laughing at their puny Ubese armour as we swagger through their defences like demigods.

To come back to how dynamic qualities might influence gameplay let me give another example.

Suppose wood has a Natural Purity value that is influenced by player and environmental factors such as mining, evil magic and so on. So you go into the Archdruids' Woods and ritually sacrifice kittens to lower that stat value. The Archdruids, when they harvest their sacred trees to make +5 spears for the Defenders of the Forest find that the NP stat of the wood is too low for +5s, they have to settle for crappy +3s. They're pissed off both with the Cult of Immanent Evil and with the Dwarven miners just upstream from their sacred woods.

At the same time all this kitten-murder is having major ramifications across a whole host of other game world values. Magic power, paladin abilities, peasant productivity all suffer as the world turns evil. A lot of players will be getting very very annoyed.

Interesting player political conflict because of the house of cards effect - all things are connected to all things.

The elephant in the room is of course the horribly annoying game effects (like the bankers being dead 10 minutes before your raid starts) and I don't have a good solution. I do think though that it is solvable although some people will always dislike and resent the sort of dynamic effects I'm talking about.

Of course dynamic is such a nebulous word that what Trion are doing may have nothing to do with my notion of gameplay affecting gameworld so that tomorrow the world will be different because of something the players do today.

In fact what I'm suggesting is something for a niche game. Me personally I think niche is the future but very few developers want to stand up and say we don't want everyone to play our game.

[Draegan]

You accidentally left a few paragraphs in that post.  You might want to edit it.

[Tarami]

The objective definitions of dynamic versus random don't matter. It's what the individual experiences that matters.

Obligatory car analogy: If Bob goes to his car, then realizes he forgot the car keys and has to get them and as a result of this delay runs Adam over, Adam is going to think it was just fucking random that HE was hit ("bad luck.") Bob will know that if he had remembered the keys, he might not have run Adam over, so to him it's a matter of cause and effect. In this example Bob might see it as dynamic, while Adam is still going to think it was random and "out of nowhere."

Problem is, most people are going to be Adam, because they're going to be the victims of other peoples' actions (or inaction.) Thus, most people are not going to be able to tell a difference between what's random and what's dynamic. For huge groups of people (the casuals) the terms are even going to be completely interchangeable.

That, I believe, is the Achilles' heel of "dynamic" game worlds. You can't make systems take outside factors into account unless the players can make a logical connection between cause and effect. If players fail to do so they'll feel frustration, helplessness and in the end quit since they apparently just don't get the game.

[Stabs]

Very good point Tarami, yet doesn't that logic lead inescapably to just re-inventing WoW? (Players know what to expect, are comfortable).

[Lantyssa]

That, I believe, is the Achilles' heel of "dynamic" game worlds. You can't make systems take outside factors into account unless the players can make a logical connection between cause and effect. If players fail to do so they'll feel frustration, helplessness and in the end quit since they apparently just don't get the game.

It would depend on what the random factors influence.

A seemingly random encounter?  Not so much as long as it's fun and rewarding.  SWG's resources were completely random.  That wasn't a source of frustration but a game unto itself.  (Well, if there was never a good resource available, but that could be weighted to fix that.)  If users expect one event to lead to another, because that's how the game works, then surprises won't be so off-putting.

If it's a system where abstract concepts lead to odd results players cannot directly see, such as WAR's Realm control?  Then it's utter frustration.  It doesn't have to be that way.

[Ghambit]

The better question is, "why do players even NEED to make a connection between cause and effect?"  In what manual does it say you have to pamper your players to the point they need to understand the how's and why's of every little thing that happens in a game?   Leave that shite for the static world min-maxers.  It's by no means a given.

[Draegan]

From a TenTon interview:


----

Basically Dynamic means a lot of little things and a few big things.  I think dynamic might mean on day you might have an NPC yelling about something in an area and the next day he's doing something different.  Or one type of mob in one area, then the next day there is something different.  They say they have the tools to implement more things as time progresses.

I also find it interesting he's considering database sites in making his decisions.

[Tarami]

I'm very sorry this post turned out so long, but I'm trying to reply to a number of arguments.

Very good point Tarami, yet doesn't that logic lead inescapably to just re-inventing WoW? (Players know what to expect, are comfortable).

I will counter by asking: Why is WoW's design so flawed and why would WoW be a more satisfying experience if it had more player-influenced mechanisms? Predictability to a known extent isn't a design flaw. Games, like everyday life, need predictability but maybe more importantly, dependability. If we cannot predict, we cannot master.

It would depend on what the random factors influence.

A seemingly random encounter?  Not so much as long as it's fun and rewarding.  SWG's resources were completely random.  That wasn't a source of frustration but a game unto itself.  (Well, if there was never a good resource available, but that could be weighted to fix that.)  If users expect one event to lead to another, because that's how the game works, then surprises won't be so off-putting.

If it's a system where abstract concepts lead to odd results players cannot directly see, such as WAR's Realm control?  Then it's utter frustration.  It doesn't have to be that way.

To repeat the essence of what Bloodworth said earlier: random distribution of random resources is just that, random. Over time, the distribution and the resources are static in supply. You can't actually provoke the spawning of Unobtainium, it happens outside anyone's control. It's something even WoW does - rare spawns of gatherable nodes and mobs.

I'm going to be a bit blunt here: I'm willing to bet money that the thought of dynamic (as in player-influenced) content is so tantalizing to people because of how it would enable them to affect the world and how it would let them influence other people by playng the game well and that it has very little to do with how other people can affect them. At its core it's about the acquisition and display of status.

By extension, the dynamic game world is still going to be owned by a ruling class of players, i.e. the catasses, and you, as a solo player, is still going to be insignificant. It's a kind of democratic system where you get voting power in proportion to your commitment to the game. If the point of the game is socio-political drama, that's fine, it's basically what fuels such a game. If the point of the game is individual progression and "DIKUism," it's going to hurt the lesser players because they'll be forced to play a game that's being dynamically and systematically (catasses are organized) tailored to fit a better class of player.

An apparent example. In a generic DIKU, there's a heritage mechanism for instance bosses that does so that every time a boss is killed, it will be replaced by a slightly more powerful mob that drops slightly better loot. Are new or sporadic players going to be able to beat this new and improved boss, six months down the line? The answer is most likely no. More dedicated players have dictated how the game is supposed to be played and at the same time taken some of this power out of the hands of the developers.

The better question is, "why do players even NEED to make a connection between cause and effect?"  In what manual does it say you have to pamper your players to the point they need to understand the how's and why's of every little thing that happens in a game?   Leave that shite for the static world min-maxers.  It's by no means a given.

To go back to the original argument - in the Wurm thread, this was posted:

I logged in for the first time. I was asked to go find a tree. Apparently there wasn't a tree for several square miles. I stopped right about there.

This is an example of a reaction when an effect can be observed, but its cause cannot. MrBloodworth explained that this was because the newbie area is heavily farmed, since all new players get that task. The tangential reason is that the world dynamic in the sense that it is influenced by player actions. Making for example the trees grow back faster if the area is more heavily farmed is actually going to make the world less dynamic, as the individual experiences will more strictly conform to a static design (the task is supposed to take yay effort to complete.)

Observable cause and effect are important because when an event takes place, one of the first questions is "why." The why is pretty central to our ability to make decisions, since it tells us how to prevent or provoke it. It has absolutely nothing to do with min-maxing, it's a core principle of our behaviour. If you were Adam in my previous example and hadn't looked both ways before crossing the street, you will be from this point on, because you might rationalize the "why" as "because I didn't look both ways" while Bob's conclusion was different. It doesn't have to be perfectly true, it just has to be a good enough cause and in this instance essentially a successful analysis of the event: if Bob had remembered the keys first time and Adam had looked both ways, it probably wouldn't have happened. Even in games that are proveably random, people will still try to discern the true cause of their (mis)fortune. That's what superstition is - an attempt to explain something that appears unexplainable.

The thing there is that games aren't susceptible to superstition and everyone knows this. There IS a rational and probably simple cause. You didn't wipe because you had angered the gods, it was because the healer stood in the fire. You yell at the healer not to stand in the fire and you are rewarded with success. If analyzing the event is much too complicated or obvious reasons lead to incorrect conclusions (and thus, the repetition of a disadvantageous situation), there will be frustration.

In short, stick the power of muddling peoples' ability to correctly analyze the event in the hands of catasses, and there'll be a lot of frustration.

[Ghambit]

So I decree, the ultimate persistent MMO is one in which the player has no idea why he/she is there, wtf is goin on, or wtf they're supposed to do.  The whole point of the game is to try and find out... only as they try, more questions arise until the only endgame is insanity and/or permadeath... which doesnt help you, since you reroll and things are totally different.  

Sorta like Memento meets The Time Machine... online  (but with the same actor)    Cmon you Rednamed folk, you know you want to.

[WindupAtheist]

I'm going to be a bit blunt here: I'm willing to bet money that the thought of dynamic (as in player-influenced) content is so tantalizing to people because of how it would enable them to affect the world and how it would let them influence other people by playng the game well and that it has very little to do with how other people can affect them. At its core it's about the acquisition and display of status.

Fail. I can't take the rest of it seriously after that. Pile on the false dichotomy between "robotic soul-suckingly static game" and "bizzare hellworld that catasses can exploit to unplayability" and I can't even work up the interest to post a lengthy response.

[Kageru]

The main thing I remember from EQ GM events was it being crashed. Half due to people trying to work out where the pellet dispenser was and half due to people who just like griefing.

Wow's approach is, to my mind, optimal. Automate the events so you can have complex behaviours (Lich king attacking Orgrimmar!) or emergent behaviour (Zombie infestation!) that a human GM would not be able to replicate. Even better the mechanisms you create are re-usable, can be incrementally improved (partly to fix exploits) and most importantly fair. If there's an event it must be repeatable at regular intervals so everyone gets to share it and it must be clear that human bias does not determine who gains rewards from it. Other examples are the fishing competitions, contested zones (wintergrasp, TBC Zone PvP) and NPC contested zones (Grizzly hills). But I'm sorry for bringing it up again because the "hand's on" approach just fails at the starting gate because of cost and scalability.

On what Heroes of Telara dynamic content will be? The version they actually implement will be PQ's that aren't always available. I'd put money on it. And then some clever person is going to wonder why content that hides itself is a good thing. Unless your game has excess content and can afford to sacrifice some base-line content in this fashion.

[WindupAtheist]

Wow's approach is, to my mind, optimal. Automate the events so you can have complex behaviours (Lich king attacking Orgrimmar!) or emergent behaviour (Zombie infestation!) that a human GM would not be able to replicate.

They have them once every three years, so rarely that they basically don't count/exist. I was ranting and raving about how awesome the WoW dungeon finder was when it came out, but anymore WoW consists of Dalaran and a handful of robotically scripted dungeons. They're gonna add all this shit in Cataclysm and everyone is going to play it once out of curiosity, then go back to doing nothing but random dungeons while never leaving the auction house.

[Kageru]

No, they have them all the time. It's "Children's week" at the moment. That's the advantage of the approach, seasonal events for zero cost once implemented. Sure, they could do more with it or evolve it faster... but it's probably not a high priority.

[WindupAtheist]

You're the one who specifically listed unique one-off events like the zombie plague as your examples.

/shrug

Anyway, if the holiday shit in WoW is your idea of optimal event content, color me really unimpressed. Some wreaths and shit that only spawn between certain dates, a few FedEx quests scripted to be unavailable 11 months out of the year, blah blah. The whole Wrath lead-up where the zombie plague, the old-style Scourge invasion, and the Halloween shit was all turned on at the same time and sort of blended together into a general atmosphere of "Shit is fucked!" was awesome. Outside of that, WoW basically sucks at anything besides delivering the exact same tightly scripted content day in and day out.

I mean, have you played other games? UO has better events than WoW. It's just not something Blizzard gives a shit about. At all. Let's not pretend "It's November so the Thanksgiving script will let people farm a pilgrim hat now" is the height of MMO events just because it's WoW and Blizzard is supposed to be infallible.