f13.net

Another lengthy screed.

http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=245

I figured the jaded folks ought to join in. ;) I was thinking of some of you when I wrote it! :Love_Letters:

I hope to have better RSS import/export stuff in place in the coming weeks, Raph.

Raph,

"In the end, the reason this is then troubling is because it effectively caps the market. As fans of the medium, we may be choking it to death with our own fandom. Oh, we can’t see that right now, when WoW is on top of the world, but once upon a time flight sims were on top of the world too, and wargames were top sellers. Building only on what has come before leads to genre nichification because it excludes newer players from the genre, demanding higher and higher levels of skill and sophistication for mere entry."

I think one thing Blizzard does as a company is refine what has become stagnate (or nichification) and provide an easier and more accessable offering as a product.  I have quite a few friends that have not been able to make the leap into a mmog until WoW, mainly because the entry experience and ease of use was not there in the game.  WoW is much more accessable.

Fargull

That's because poets are either too lazy, or lack the balls to become musicians.  I've had teachers try to show me the value of poetry, but I never have been able to see it.  It doesn't entertain me like a story, and it doesn't bring me joy, like a song.

Haiku is the one exception, because it is a game.  I can appreciate a good haiku, because I know the retraints the author has to work within, and tight they are, yet some incredibly humorous and wise things have been said through haiku form.


[edit]
OK, I should have finished the article before commenting.


My haiku example fits right into the "player knowledge" part of the quote.  If I didn't know the rules of haiku, it would have seemed a cliche "Confucius say..." sort of thing to me.

Games are failing by trying to be all things to all people.  This is what happens when business gets into bed with art (and yes, to some degree I believe that game creation and design IS art).  This creates a situation where the best designers will seek to work on projects given the best resources but will ultimately end up in frustration with the fact that they have to water down their ideals in order to appease business objectives. Now that the gaming industry has become such big business, all most game designers can hope for is that some niche product that they created will land them in the role of lead designer for some massive project.  With this newly found success they can generate enough momentum and credibility to get back to their niche roots. 

I just don't think it's possible to marry mass-market appeal with a high quality game.  You need the resources to make a high quality game, but you can't achieve high quality status while maintaining marketability.  I think that most designers are doomed to choosing between making quality nich games or massively successful marketing engines.  Most will allow their egos to choose the latter. 

No, no, no.  I have a quote I drag out when people start talking about evolution, "Evolution is not a step-ladder".  It is not hill climbing.

Evolution is ultimately about surviving, or to be more specific, exisiting.  I'll let you in on a little secret, the meaning of life.  It's not to be happy, or better, or to have a big house, or whatever.  The secret "meaning of life" is, simply, to exist.

Reproduction, adaptation, evolution... they are all just means to an end.  Raph is right; people tend to connect evolution with progress.  It's mainly because we have the big brains to allow us to ponder our existance and to think of what makes our lives good or bad, happy or sad, etc.  But really, evolution is just a means to an end, and that end is the continuing existance for a set of molecules.

We haven't seen nothin' yet folks. Someone is going to luck along when the moons are aligned just right with some kind of 3D/MySpace/SecondLife/Mosaic system and become a top 10 site on the net -- only it will be a 3D virtual world instead of a 2D site.

You are so right.  I don't really see the appeal with myspace, but people 5 or more years younger than me do.  Even my little brother, who is 7 years younger, and not a computer guy, sort of does too.  He's not a myspace junkie, but friends told him about it, and he did use it to hook up with this girl in one of his classes.

What you are talking about is what The Sims Online should have been.  Someone is going to make a mint with a product like that.

So, a 3D version of This (http://www.gaiaonline.com/).

I'm hoping Alter Life from NCSoft turns out to be like that. But then, that game sorta disappeared into the ether.

Sort of. But more on the order of they distribute the 3D client (think Shockwave), the content creation tools (think Flash+Bryce3D+Spore Procedurals), and server software (think Apache) and you get to decide what you want to do with it. One instance of the server software gives you a Spore procedural planet of one inch macro zoom or some such and you get to do whatever you want with your planet. Then they prove the concept by building a 3D MySpace+YouTube+The-Movies+Geocities clone on top of it and give everyone their own free hosted procedural planet. For the win.

Multiverse.net wants to be this but it isn't.

Nicely written!

"..In his fascinating series of posts on game genres, DanC at Lost Garden describes the factors that lead to the death of a genre. He concludes that genres die when their template is defined, when the outline of the mechanics is established and a single “genre-king” game emerges that summarizes and defines the potential of the genre.."

- This could be said to be a good illustration how Shumpeter's creative destruction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction can transmake or transmute one "spent" genre into another more evolved one (as we have seen with the whole pnp -> mud -> uo -> eq -> wow -> ?), arriving at the same spot as you concluded.

"..We’re being elitist and saying that it’s not good music unless it has a complex time signature, not real art unless it makes an arch comment on society, not real poetry unless it reflecting sound poetry..."

- Are we being elitist, or are we being better at applying our increased knowledge of what actually is important in a product? I've had long discussions with my brother, who happens to do music for a living, if my assessment of music is less accurate than his. I know that economists have concluded that "expert" customers have a wider spectra of judgement (ie bad things gets lower mark than from new customers) as well as a more established cognitive functionality for appreciating things (kinda like a musician can distinguish a drum solo in a jazz song from the rest of the score, while someone who haven't experienced jazz have quite a problem distinguishing anything from the general sound picture).
  Maybe the fact that wow acts as an open gate for a new, unexperienced crowd, which in time will be just as jaded as the rest here  :-P, will increase the total market so much that it no longer might be totally impossible to imagine that a developed nische game like "guitar hero online" will draw enuff ppl to warrant the money for its development.

Two things I can think of in reply:

One:  Comparing game design with evolution seems like a bit of a stretch.  With evolution, there's no real "goal," it's just a result of the way the world works.  With game design, there is a very clear goal (to make money, or to make fun games, depending on where you sit in the corporate structure).  It doesn't make sense to talk about evolution as progress, because evolution does not move towards some distant goal, but it DOES make sense to talk about game design as progress, in that games are making more money, and are becoming more fun (or even if they're not, they can at least be said to be making NO progress, wheras with evolution, it doesn't even make sense to measure it in terms of progress).  Thinking of the games today versus the games we had twenty years ago, it seems fairly clear that there is some kind of progress.  To keep the evolution analogy, you'd need to argue that games from twenty years ago were as good (twenty years ago) as games today are (today), which implies that people from 20 years ago would find our current games as much fun as we find 20-year old games (and while I enjoy the good old days as much as the next guy, I have to admit that I think I would have loved todays games back then, too).

Two:  Arts and poetry and so on have become increasingly impossible for the joe on the street to understand, and they've been pushed to the sidelines of pop culture because of it.  I agree about that.  But I don't agree that the same problem is befalling video games.  If anything, the more successful video games are often the ones which are MORE approachable, and there has been a resulting trend towards "dumbing down" games to reach a wider audience.  World of Warcraft you can just jump right in and play, as with a number of other Blizzard titles.  Eventually, you might get to the whole "LFM UBRS tank/DPS" level of jargon, but it's rare that the game (pr any game) is totally indecipherable to users in the same way that something like Sentinels of Fire (http://www.users.csbsju.edu/~jtupa/SentinelsOfFire/3-28b-95.html) is.  While there are probably some titles which have become unapproachably arcane in the last few years, I don't think it makes sense to say that all, or even most innovation takes this form.

Stagnation is easy to achieve through constant emulaiton. However, MMORPGs are not just games. They're a relationship between gamer and game, to such a degree that two different MMORPGs do not need to necessarily compete for the same person (how many will jump from SL to WoW to Eve to GW?) Further, given the digital distribution intrinsic to the genre in the form of constant delivery of new content, and the rise of digital distribution/online ordering, retailers and their limited shelf spaces are no longer the arbiters of success. Finally, what critics think of MMORPGs is irrelevant outside of their core audience, itself separated between each game and each form of communication.

As such, it'd actually be pretty hard for this genre to stagnate. Forget WoW. Unless you're EA or Microsoft, you're not going to outspend Vivendi Universal. Scale your business to the target audience you want to deliver a game for and be as proportionally successful.

I don't like the sound of it.

I don't want "innovation" as a completely different product. I want innovation in what I already like. But daring more to delve in the possibilities available.

I don't want games like Second Life. I want the *worlds* I currently love.

From that perspective I'm really not interested in that kind of "innovation".

Is that what is actually happening though? Most games today feature much more tutorial information than past games, as well as online FAQs, forums, etc. WoW is popular at least in part because it *isn't* particularly arcane and difficult. For example the handy quest icons that appear over people's heads.

I agree with the basic idea, but I don't see that actually in MMORPGs.

There are a lot of genres where games make instrumental "improvements" by becoming more complex. Fighting games are a great example of this. What I would call traditional RTS games like Warcraft/Starcraft have done this as well, and are dying a slow death. But I don't see MMORPGs doing this.

It's also possible to bring new life to old genres. Look at tactics games on the GBA. There are tons of them, and people like them. I guess in part because they aren't about exploring some arcane corners of the design space but are made with broader appeal.

When SF2 came out it was really incredibly new and exciting. CE came out and let you choose the same characters and the bosses. HF came out and made the game a lot better, but it was just tweaks to the existing ruleset. Byt the time Super and ST roll out most casual people really can't tell the difference. You can tech throws in ST but not Super?? Wow color me excited.

Even as huge fans who appreciate such balance tweaks and revisions you begin to realize that the initial rush is gone and has been replaced with modest incremental improvements. And in the case of SF improvements that many people can barely notice.

The thing is, there were fighting games before SF2. It was not a new genre - it was just a radical jump in quality. It was light years ahead of previous efforts.

To me fantasy MMORPGs are in the same boat. They can be made better, but most games now get diminishing returns as far as actual improvement and the "oh wow" factor is gone. It's great that they are making kill-stealing harder or making loot distribution options fairer but those are again minor incremental improvements.

But, there is still plenty of room for a fantasy MMORPG to blow people away, just as SF2 did. Just as Mario 3 did. It just takes the right talent. True creative genius is the rarest of commodities.

/clap

I completely agree! Innovation is a foregone conclusion. But the problem is that some dev teams dont seem to want to apply that innovation to the core game they run. They want to put it in an expansion or to make a whole new fucking game out of it (NGE). There is no need to re-invent the wheel because you discovered a new kind of rubber. Just put the rubber on existing rims.

I don't agree with this statement.  I can think of two examples that cross this bridge to "the common man" or whatever...

One is the scene from the Shawshank Redemption when Andy puts Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" on the speaker system.  The summation by Red in that.. "Those voices soared, higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away."  Second to that one would be the rise of Marshall Mathers, who is nothing if not a poet, maybe not one to my taste, but he does have talent.

In my mind, it's the elitism of success. The critics (http://www.darniaq.com/phpNews/news.php?action=fullnews&showcomments=1&id=179) more in their role as non-paid advertisement than does the enjoyment of the target audience. This is partly because the critics are easier to predict. They are the last people to change in an evolution, particularly in entertainment. All change comes first from innovators, then gains acceptance by the target audience, and then critics change their expectations to match the new delivery.

Designing for critics is designing for yesterday, refining what you already know, banking on a predictable success, the sort of thing business people like because it's quantifiable.

Innovation is anathema to that.

Can you have novelty but crappy stories (in a MMORPG)?  I think you disagree, that game innovation requires both unique feature change and novel story-telling development? 

I'd argue that less than 1/3 of players even bother with the story in an MMOG.  I'm willing to bet that an MMOG could be a huge success with little or no story elements to it at all.  Most people I've watched play MMOG's cycle through NPC text to get to the goodies.

Innovation comes in finding new ways to "hook" players for the long haul.  It's easy for games to hold a player's attention for a few days/weeks.  Finding a way to keep them paying month after month is where innovation will fluorish... at least with mmogs.

What exactly will that mean? Are going to start aggregating dev blogs or something?

So, while I agree that WoW is more accessible than most of the past games in the genre, I strongly challenge that it is "simpler." Anyone willing to do a feature count, a system by system comparison?

Just as an example, WoW introduced a highly complex concept that only MMO vets will appreciate (everyone else will think "duh, of course"): differing classes having different methods of doing specials to the point of having different stat bars. It's undeniably a complication in the overall system design. It may also make things more intuitive, but it's greater complexity overall.

Complexity in design and intuitiveness aren't necessarily opposed. The design of a modern GUI is FAR FAR more complex than a command line interface.

Well.... the interface might have become more complex - but that doesnt necessarily mean that it has become harder to play the game.


Just compare it to everquest, which I've had the most experience with. Compare how you were treated as a new player (no maps, attack a guard and get killed, lose your "newbie note" and be unable to grab quests from your guildmaster, get killed and lose experience, get killed and lose your corpse, no clear description of what spells do, hard mobs mixed with easier ones etc. etc) and I would argue that WoW will not only go easier on you, but also actively prevent you from screwing things (cant attack guards, easy way of finding corpses, ingame maps, detailed spell description, no exploss the first few lvls, easier design of zones, easier, more forgiving mobs , spellline upgrades highly linear)

I dunno if I would consider changing the color of mana to yellow instead of blue a highly complex concept btw..)

I think the buzz word was 'abstraction' from a little bit back.

And Raph, don't you have minions or something you can send off to count things?

And I'd agree. Even good stories are ignored, which is why it's probably hard to justify spending time and money on creating them.

However, I think this is causal: knowing the story is irrelevant to the experience, so therefore not worth learning to individuals most nterested in maximizing their game play. If the story matter, if decision trees existed and their choices mattered, and if the results of your story made you different from someone else in ways simple stats do not, then people would start caring.

A Warrior's Rage Bar and Rogues' Action Points are very different from the mana-to-action ideas of old (incidentally, CoH also now has a rage-like bar buildup for Blasters: the more you're hit, the more it grows, the more accurate you are). However, I don't necessarily feel they innovate the experiences any more than giving that player something different to worry about in an otherwise-similar experience. They are, at best, baby-step forwards to what other gamers already enjoy. I consider CoH's combat system much more innovative because of the true breadth of playstyles across every way to play.

WoW is "more of the same" in terms of having a bunch of people doing their own thing in a group. They don't even have anything approaching FFXI's Renkai or EQ2's Heroic Opportunities, both innovations that truly capitalize on a bunch of people playing together, extensions of strategies and tactics players develop anyway. No housing, very little personalization, nothing that really capitalizes on it being "massive" at all.

It's a good successful system upon which to slap some creative thinking though. There have been examples of that, and I hope they channel their success to more of it.

Thanks for that, what I was getting at -- That innovation in anything feature-wise has to be coupled with novelty in the content as well.  Or at least in how the content relates to the player.  But maybe we're just so used to broken and meaningless storylines that having content that is actually meaningful to player advancement would be considered innovative.   :evil:

Bad example. The complexity only becomes apparent when you play a second class. For your first character there is zero added complexity. The fact that Warrior and Rogue work differently doesn't matter until you've played both. The initial understandability really isn't any different.

Agreed.

I don't know if you guys remember this, but Turbine hired a guy with a masters degree in literature to write the backstory for the game.  A lot of that lore also carried into the first quests.

Most players didn't give a shit, but all that lore was there for the few explorer archetypes to find.  I'm not an explorer ype of guy, but to this day, I occasionally get the urge to replay AC1, from scratch, on a carebear server, just to experience all the love that went into making it.

I regret that they removed the original spell research system.  I'd also like to play through that.  I played on Darktide, and Splitpea was a necessity for competition.

When referring to the most popular of both, perhaps. Emacs makes most modern GUIs look trivial, and object oriented GUIs make most command lines seem complex. Sometimes the GUI and command line complexity is there because of inherited baggage, just as in games design.

OK, I'm going to quote a quote here, because I don't want to track down the original.

I disagree with Raph; a modern GUI is FAR FAR more simple than a command-line interface.  The GUI user is limited by what he sees.  When I played Scott Adams, ans Infocom adventure games, I tried everything.  The command-line lets you attempt anything under the sun; the GUI lets you cliick a lot of places.

I have read several of these musings of Raph's and I found this one more approachable than others, to my simple mind. I can't pin down why I feel that way, but I do. Good read.


I started to reply that in all likelyhood the min/max'ers would determine THE route through your decision tree and no more would be known of the storyline than now. But you used the phrase "made you different" and I like that. It does not necessarily mean a path to stat_advance_A or gizmo_B rather it can mean a choice of path to either lifestyle Story_Landed_Baron_A or Story_Sea_Pirate_B (or C, D, Et cetera). And that is interesting.


When he reads that, in the next couple days, I am sure he will appreciate the thought.

GUIs are usually simpler to use (at least in the ideal world) but far more complex to design.  I think that's what Raph was getting at.  If so, he is correct.

But we KNOW that. Those two parts need just to be better identified and then placed where they belong. Just that.

There's SO MUCH innovation in the old school RPGs like Ultima than what I see in the future. The point is about taking both, what we had in the past and we lost, and the open-ended structure of the games of the future.

Because these stories suck?
And where you have seen exactly these stories. Because I'm more than ready to demolish this argument.
Oh, and maybe it isn't because these stories are irrelevant the reason why they are ignored?

Which confirms the point: they suck.

I'm ready to say that out there there are MORE potential players interested in interesting narratives than players interested in level up mechanics. We don't have the evidence of this just because the market is filled of the latter and has none of the first.

False.

I can read a book and "care" even if I have no control over what the characters of the book do.

I hate the discussion of story in MMORPGs, but I'll address it a tiny bit. To me there are a bunch of problems with MMORPG stories:

1: They are loosely integrated into the game.

2: They are not compelling. They use stock names, stock ideas, etc. The evil orcs from Gul'Thok fought the elves from Everwillow. Yes...we know.

3: The story doesn't match the atmosphere of the game well at all.

Most of the times it seems some third rate "lore" writer just did his thing on the side and they stuck his crappy writing into various tomes and special items and that's the "story."

MMORPGs are also terrible about "show and don't tell" in this regard, which along with things like the uninspired ideas and naming make the stories incomprehensible. So and so is allied with what's his face fighting the evil troll betrayers or some shit - just point me in the right direction to kill rats already motherfuckers!

One thing almost all good stories have is a compelling set of characters, and most MMORPG plots don't have compelling characters or even really characters at all. At best they are names in a chat bubble. Without any memorable characters the stories fall apart.

A story is more than words in a chat bubble or text in some tome you find.

I wrote not long ago a two part article about stories and questing in mmorpgs that touches (and agrees) with all those points. For those interested: part1 (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/1069) and part2 (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/1074).

It starts from a superficial theory and an analysis of questing in WoW and DAoC to then finish with my own practical conclusion about how I'd design a different quest system.

The basic point is the distinction between "filler" (optional) text and a story that is actually the focus of the game. Instead of just a passive backdrop.

That's the core point, imho.

The conclusion is: I want the story to be the SUBJECT of the game. Not the annoying, optional extra that just gets in the way of the gameplay.

The story tangent makes me wonder about the reaction to this other, different pair of blog posts (which HRose already commented on, since unlike most of you, he's a regular on the site):

http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=193 -- "The Pixar Lesson"

http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=216 -- a sample quest, "Beowulf"

Now Raph - i'm a regular. Reader that is :P. I find i learn more by reading and by the time i formulate my thoughts someone else - usually from here or 'the other site' has said what i think. But i lurk, muahaaaaa.

See? I posted and added nothing of value.

/lurk

I'm a relative MMO virgin (and an F13 virgin as well I suppose), but I guess I am a prototypical gamer.  In examining my own reasons for wanting to play an MMORPG, I find that the actual story part itself is not one of the compelling issues...a good story would be welcome, but in the few MMOs I have tried the story itself seemed unnecessary.   This isn't to say, however, that a great story couldn't become central to the success of a future game, but I think it has to be implemented differently than it currently tends to be.

If you look at a few examples of vanilla RPGs (of the non MMO type) that achieved huge success over the years - both in my own mind as well as my perception of their commercial successes - it seems that the story itself is a huge factor.  I am thinking of games like KOTOR, Zelda, the Final Fantasy series...the uber popular single player RPGs.

KOTOR (either 1 or 2) had, even at release, rather outdated graphics.  The combat system was okay, but definitely a watered-down, more accessible version of Bioware's D20 system, and nothing particularly astonishing.  It is a Star Wars title, which is a double-edged sword.  What really set it apart was the story.  The dialogue was not only well-written, thought provoking and often humorous, but it had a major bearing on the development of both the story and the central character.  Everything you said or did mattered in the grander scheme.  In short, the game forced you to attach yourself emotionally to it.

The Final Fantasy series is/was similar in many ways, minus the "decision trees" that KOTOR forced on you.  It is true that these games also had innovative combat systems, and recent editions were pushing technical limits as well (at least in CGI)...but it was the story telling that sucked people in.  As silly as they often were, they somehow managed to draw you in anyway.

Another thing these kinds of  games have in common is that you, the player, are the center of the universe.  The game all but forces you to follow the story, because it is YOUR story.  You are affecting the progression of the story, or it is affecting you.  In short, you have a vested interest in it.

This, in my opinion, is where the MMOs get it "wrong".  As long as you are able to ignore the story itself, skip to the bottom of the quest journal for directions, get your shiny reward after performing straight-forward actions with complete disregard for the impact of the story or its impact on you - then 90% of the population are not going to care.  There are undoubtedly interesting, well-written, thought provoking or humorous stories/quests in any and every MMORPG - but if I am not somehow forced to care about them, then I simply am not going to.  I will just go kill 10 Undead Midget Clowns for shiny thing.

The paradox here, in my opinion, is this:  How do you engage me fully into the story of the game in an MMO environment so that it feels like I matter to the story, and that the story matters to me?  How can you make me feel like the center of the universe, without it actually being so?

If you cannot achieve that, then the story will always be secondary at best.   People have clamoured for a KOTOR online game, but once they realize that all of the above will go kaputski, then it will lose all of its appeal.

Actually, both are equally limited by the visions of their creators. No game exists with unlimited options. Command-line is simply less limited by screen real estate. It's also a lot harder to intuit for two reasons:

• Most people are not programmers, so aren't thinking like one.
• Most people are not designers, so don't easily intuit the designer's intent in a situation. GUI is linked to this in my mind. You can give players puzzles, but you have to give them the tools to solve it through the system. This is one reason why traditional adventure games aren't selling like hotcakes.

So I agree GUI is complex. The graphics part alone may not be, but the screen real estate and knowing what a player needs to know at any given time is not always easy. Compare CoH's interface with SWGs. The games are fundamentally different to their core, requiring completely different things (though I'd argue SWG's is overdone for what really needs to happen at a particular time).

That's why I used the word "causal". They don't exist outside of single-player games because so far the perception is that making creative stories is irrelevant to the type of people playing these games. They want objectives and short to long term rewards. And they want those delivered in the form of character advancement and items. They don't care if they have to hack up wolves or kittens or dragons. Everything goes under the sword or spell in support of efficient gains.

Irrelevant reference. In MMORPGs, you are in compete control. Your relationship with your avatar is on a different order than being a third person omniscient observer of a story delivered in a one-way entertainment experience (TV, movies, books, etc). You don't control the book but you can control the game. In the "successful" MMORPGs though, your choices are very limited (either advance, or not). In virtual lifestyles, you do literally get to write your own story. In neither does the game give you a long series of narrative to play within though. For the most part, the world will not react to you any differently based on the choices you make. This has been lost since EQ1, and since the much earlier Ultima IV.

I suspect it'll come back again when developers realize the min/maxers are not the only people interested in playing in semi-persistent online worlds. But since that group's the loudest, and the most established (being the earliest adopters), and some of them have gone on to development to push their preferences and worldview, the limbo we're in is the result.

The other avenue is to push player stories. This is tougher because it requires accountability similarly lost, and personal motivation, which doesn't seem to be as popular as game-direction. Yet it happens all the time, just not in the games that get millions of subscribers.

I think the quest / storyline issue with MMOGs is more due to the inherent singleplayer focus that has kept its latched claws on the industry since UO first hit the market.  Hell, the best lore in game that I have run into as a player was the damn Necromancy hints in UO.

One huge issue with any story (and I don't know why a modular box design for quests has not been done) is that I see zero reason to ever read the quest more than once since it will never change for the life of the game.  That damn idiot in Duotar will still demand the death of 10 boars no matter how many months the world might advance.  Static content is the death of good lore.  Hell, I would be peachy if I started a new alt and every quest I thought I knew was different the second time around.  Of course, several sites online would be going bug eyed insane, but hey, that is interesting too...

Evolution *is* progress in a certain direction.  As you say, it is a means to an end.  Whether it is progress overall, i.e. whether it leads to something that is truly better in the big-picture, is another thing altogether and you are misreading my post if you think that's what I'm saying (but hey, at least you promoted me from Saint to Sergeant :)).  Also you should understand that when I am talking about hil climbing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_climbing) I am talking about the fundamental mechanics of evolution, the algorithm.  Evolution is stochastic, parallel hill climbing.  That means, it is a process of trying lots of random solutions to a problem at once, and advancing to those solutions which are slightly better for a given environment.

I think you are trying to make a point that is really pretty much what I am saying.  Evolution isn't guaranteed to get you someplace good, and you may get stuck in a local maxima.  I.e. you may climb to the top of the short hill and not have anywhere to go from there.  And how you get off that hill, typically, is that the environment around you changes, making certain solutions no longer optimal and causing the agents of evolution to try other solutions and look for new hills.  The thesis of my comments really is that in trying to climb their respective hills, consumers, developers and publishers all head towards niches and local maxima and thus stifle innovation.   Consumers play what they know because that is the easiest way to climb a hill from where they are.  Publishers re-use concepts that worked in the pask and avoid risk like the plague because it may plummet them into a valley.  Developers have to feed their families and may put aside dreams and good ideas to make a living.  It will require a large movement to get off the current hill, a lucky innovation, or a change in the environment to make significant change from current genre lines.  Or it may be that evolution under different environments (i.e. Korea) will find new heights that we can use here.  Etc.

To get involved with the story discussion: yes I think it's about showing instead of telling.  I think that's something MMO developers are trying to figure out.  But I don't think it has to do with the written prose in the game.  I think the written prose is a crutch and a distraction.  An attempt to bring in story from somewhere else and paste it over your game.  Any quest text, no matter how well-written is "telling".  You're a hero because the game said in a text description that you were.

And as long as massively-multiplayer games rely on text and graphics to convey story I think they will be lacking.  They will be telling instead of showing.  A single-player game like the very excellent Indigo Prophecy can get away with this stuff because it is implementing a very carefully arranged story and directing a single player through it with a finite horizion (usually less than 100 hours) of story.  That works for singleplayer stuff very well and is completely infeasible for massively multiplayer stuff.  In a massively multiplayer context where gameplay is intended to last months all narrative must come through gameplay (after which you can push some text labels on it).  Players see through the text, no matter how well written and just look for the gameplay.  It's inevitable.  "I don't care what the quest is.  What do I have to do and what do I get when I do it?"  That's what has actual meaning and in contrast the text is easily seen to be completely meaningless. The place to create a story is not with an NPC description of why you are doing what you are doing.  It is in the doing.  Which boils down to game mechanics.  (read this (http://stgabe.blogspot.com) for more on how meaning is fundamentally tied to gameplay in an MMOG).

An example I used in a post on Raph's site was:

What you do, and the results of failure or success are all defined strictly through gameplay and the text labels attached are purely secondary.  And yet a very effective story is told.  MMO's need to find better ways to do this.  They don't do it well right now because of two things IMO.  One is that it is just very hard to do.  Coming up with an idea for a one-off game like Fish Banks is one thing.  Filling a world with such interactive games and making them have an infinite or near-infinite horizon of playability is very difficult.  Secondly I think we are stuck in the mindset of table-top gaming and small-world MUD's.  I think we need to forget aboutthese as a model for creating stories because these worlds work only because they are carefully hand-crafted by administrators and DM's for small audiences.  Here's where we will hear the cry for "player-created content".  I just think that is a hill that has been climbed already with games like NWN and there are limitations there that still prevent this from taking off.  Developers can't trust players to create first-class content and so player content always has to be delegated to a secondary role.  And generally not enough players care about creating content to get it off the ground anyway.  I think we need to throw away the idea of player-created content and move on to player-created gameplay.  I.e. creating systems like Fish Banks where the actions of players, through the gameplay, create the gameplay (and through gameplay, a story).  ATitD is perhaps the best attempt at that so far and I think that ideas like ATitD could go a lot further than they have -- we haven't reached the peak of that hill yet.  And some areas of player-created content as it is defined now are also examples of player-created gameplay.  Creating cities, and other world-creation game mechanics in SWG are a good example.

I think a lot of you are missing what Raph was saying in his article. What I got out of it was "Don't get pigeonholed into the current MMOG mechanics. There are other ways to do 3d worlds.". A lot of the posts in this thread still seem to be stuck on the current MMOG mechanic.

---


(http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?a=1&w=320&h=240&r=1y&u=www.secondlife.com&u=www.imvu.com&u=www.gaiaonline.com)

Okay, imvu.com wins. It's MySpace+Renderosity+SL+IGE.

MySpace clone, check.
3D Avatar IM chat, check.
3D Content marketplace, check.
3D Player content creation, check.
3D Content creation tools, check.
Paying for virtual crap, check.

They pretty much have a lot of what I was talking about. The only thing they don't seem to have done is tie it into a massive "game" element. It's just 3D 1v1 chat or maybe max 16 person 3D chat in a "movie set" location. They are coming at it from a website with tacked on 3D elements though verses a MMOG with tacked on web elements.

This is something I feel qualified to talk about. You guys leave me behind with all the mumbo-jumbo stuff about MMO analysts. But I do read, alot. I devour books and magazines. I read at least a full novel every week when I am in form, and even when I dont read much, only a couple times a week, I still finish a book every 2 weeks. When I am really bored, I can down a 500+ page book in 3 days.

I love good stories.

But I admit freely that I dont bother to read hardly anything in the games I have played (SWG and ATitD). After the first mission blurb, I never read them again. After my first story Arc, I never bothered with them again. The only Quests I bothered reading was the Warren (in SWG).

Part of the problem is that so many damn people are FRANTIC to get XP, and you dont XP from reading. So if you are with a group, its very likely most of them just want you to kill and move on. And since virtually none of the solo Quests are (were) detailed enough to be potentially interesting, I wouldnt get them then either.

If the obsession with getting XP was not as much of an issue, then maybe people might take some time to read or immerse themselves in the story. But you would also naturally need to have good stuff to read. Anyone here ever read the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books? Those were great! Really made you feel like a part of the story. It blows my mind that these kind of missions are not a part of any MMO I have heard of.
 All I see is "do A, then B, then C" or " Go to A, kill that, take loot to B, turn it over, protect B from C" or variations of that. Why cant we make use of the wonderful flexibility of multiple plot lines and outcomes?

If a game was released that had original and stimulating stories, and where people didnt get the heebie-jeebies if they weren't maximizing their XP intake, then maybe we would see some of the non-murderers who enjoy games joining up. You know, the Explorers and Socializers?

Why did you read that one? I plotted it, though I did not write the actual dialogue, just the outline of the conversation.

It's actually just about the only content of mine in SWG, I think (as opposed to systems).

Even though that question wasn't directed to me, I will answer - because I read it too.  The reason?  I felt that I had to.   It was confusing enough (in a good sense) that you were practically compelled to read to ensure that you caught all the details.  This is a good thing, because it manages to integrate the story itself with the ultimate goal.

The stories that make you pay attention and force you to care are the best ones...as long as it is also written well.  KOTOR comes to mind again here.

That has been my point as well. When the story matters to the game, it gets read.

Hrose?

What? I agree. As I agree with what Akkori wrote above.

All I wrote recently and on that other thread about the levels, all pivots around the same points. I also want back the stories and the immersion in the mmorpgs. I want NPCs characters that live in the world instead of just being serviceable cheese dispensers. I want a game based on skills and that is self-consistent instead of needing excuses to keep the players hooked up even if the game has nothing to offer.

I want back all what MATTERS and that this genre made us forgot. We basically inherited and polished only the worst parts. We attentively filtered the crap, it seems.

Excuses of a game, without having the game.

I disagree, when the story matters it doesn't get read. 99% of the players out there don't want to waste time reading. [Good] Voice acting is the way to go. If need be, force people to listen to it in order to learn what they have to do (a la Deus Ex or the Harclave's Quest in EQ2). Basically, game writing is often too horrible to even waste time on things like reading.

I agree. But good voice acting would be interesting ONLY in the case what is being said starts to become relevant. The voice acting for the quests we have right now is again pure "filler".

Good voice acting could add a whole lot if the world had characters and immersive stories. But again this would work only in a totally different model. The voice acting is another tool to bring the focus on the story and the mechanics of the story (so the world, instead of the player) but it's the structure (the shift of focus in the gameplay) to define the role of the voice acting.

That's why I mentioned Harclave. If you haven't played EQ2 or done anything in the Splitpaw Saga, let me just say, it's really goddamn cool.

This is a circular argument though around the same question though. When has the story mattered? No matter how good a particular passage is, if the whole purpose of it is to fill space before giving you the exact choiceless direction (Kill X for Y or don't Kill X for Y), then it's wasting time to read it for most.

When I think of integrated stories, I mean having players live in a world going on around them, with various factions vying for relevance, where choosing one side over another has direct short and long term impact on where you go and what you do, and choices along the way similar have impact. Sort of old skool type stuff here. Basically, story can lead to accountability, which seems to be a form of profanity nowadays like full-PvP was three years ago.

To your point, EQ2 has been doing some great stuff with this in my opinion, but mostly on the macro level. For me at least though (which means I could be way wrong, since I only played it in beta), the choices one made were limited to either advancing or not advancing. If you were liked in Qeynos, you either made the conscious choice to rebel through that late-teens quest, or you traveled the path of being slightly liked to openly beloved. It's certainly a nice step forward, but I'd prefer a more fluid experience.

The game has changed 1,000% since you last played. If you haven't played since beta (especially you, actually), you need to give it another shot.

Very much agree.  I was very surprised when some friends dragged me kicking and screaming to play EQ2.  It appeals to group play now, while having plenty of individual activities.  The major penalties for playing in a group have all but disappeared.

Yups. The major penalty now for playing in a group is playing with a group. Blech.

I tried to tell ya'all that EQ2 already had better quests than WoW and was implementing solo content at a furious pace months ago. :)

Gabe.

Ton of good points out there I was going to reply to separately, but will try to tie them together instead with one sentence: Story doesn't have to be what you read, it's what you experience.

A couple people of have mentioned voice-overs as the replacement for text, and that "showing" isn't telling, and therefore isn't good enough. I'll try to give two examples from old EQ1:

Our loved/hated Sleeper's Tomb: This sucked because it was a one shot experience, and EQ didn't have any additional one shot experiences, so only a very few ever got to expeirence it, but the fact that player's actions changed the world was an experience. When all 4 guardians died, Kerafym (I think, it's been along time) actually went out into different zones and did things (ok, so he just killed everyone, but still)--the world had changed, and people experienced something that they wouldn't have experienced otherwise. Yes, you could go read up on how Kerafym was hatched and why, and what that did to the Dragon Council, and what THAT did to the iksar empire, and why the frogloks were down there camping Sebilis and all that, but it was the game changing experience that in my opinion made it a good (better than otherwise) story.

A second example of a failed story was the iksar/chardok (can't remember the race off the top of my head) war, and how the snake race inter-related when SoL came out. The reason that this one failed however is because there wasn't any experience involved in the process--you either raided Chardok and killed the royals, or you didn't, but nothing ever happened one way or the other. Now, had you been able to sway the balance of power between the two, and, say, if you helped escort a war party of iksar npc from the iksar city to chardok, they would actually stay there and do things until defeated again, that would be an experience for not only those that helped one side or the other, but those that came along afterwards as well.

I think voiceovers would be an even worse alternative than text--because text is (relatively) easy to update and evolve. Voiceovers are a lot more investment, and therefore would have a lot less long term benefit.

I also think that static worlds (and looking back, this is why I detest the concept of instancing so much--it's almost by definition static because what someone does isn't experienced by anyone else at a later time...they just load up the instance again) are the root failure of story in MMO environments--the "story" can simply be read once, but it's not on (ongoing) experience.

The poster above nailed it right on the head. I read the Warren text because I didnt know what the hell to do! BUT, it was a nice bonus that the story interesting, had a beginning and end, and I was about to be a part of it.

I disagree with the voiceover thing, but only for technical reasons. The cost of getting so many VO recorded would be pretty steep I think. But I have to admit, the Entry quest in SWG is pretty snazzy. The Han VO is good, and I got a little thrill the first time I heard it. Yeah, its stupid, but it's Star Wars, so bite me. And, as someone mentioned, text is easier to implement, edit, change, and can be discarded with little thought to the effort in implementing it.

Lest ye think I am completely opposed to VO, let me reassure you that I *would* like to see more in game, but only as a supplement to a rich texual content addition. There are 10 planets out there, and only maybe 3 are used regularly for adventuring. Thats sad. There is a LOT of history out there for SOE to use, especially if they push the timeline forward far enough (Vong, anyone?). Star Wars has a rich history, despite Lucas' mediocrity.

One of the things I really crave is to "Make A Difference" in the game. I want to see my actions affect the World. This can be in a literal way (blowing up stuff that stays destroyed), or figurative (I am one of 3 people who knows and can teach a certain skill). There are systems in SWG, for instance, that sorta do that. Their factional "point system" keeps track of who kills the most of the opposite faction, and it influences which faction has NPC's in a city. Or the Bestine Painting Vote system (broken now for several months), where you voted for a guy, and the next Art release depended on that. So it CAN be done. Its just not done enough. And with multiple servers, its probably pretty hard to do.

And by the way, I take issue with the supposition that 99% of the players in MMO's dont like to read. The problem is, once again, twofold. The text doesnt matter, and its rarely interesting. The Kashyyyk Quests are pretty well written, but they are still just A,B,C quests, with no real interesting outcome.

I know that having a truly dynamic, story-driven game would be a pretty serious task, but it would be extremely cool. Stories interest more people that those who only want to murder things all day long for XP. Hell, MMO's a BASED on a story, dont ya know!? Why does it have to end there?

And I still believe that Devs are wasting a HUGE source of stories and content... the players. I just cant believe that so many people on these forums think its too much work to develop a tool that allows players to make their own content. But regardless, it seems to me that a Dev team should focus as much on dynamic content as it does combat. The Live Events team in SWG is pretty good, but completely inadequate to service more than one or two servers. There should *always* be Digiteers (where does that term come from? I forget) online, generating targetted missions, and opening new Steps in Existing Quests. Somehow, Hollywood manages to generate a fresh story every week for its TV audience. That, if applied to an MMO, would be spectacular. Add in the ability for Players to affect the course and progress, and you would see something amazing. IMHO.

Shit, that much? Well then, I'm already into them for two titles, so maybe it's time to check out a Station pass. Time is the only limiting factor, but it's not like SWG is going anywhere (or is it? *evil/suspicious bass hits* :evil: )

Question: is the 7-day Trial of the Isle (http://www.trialoftheisle.com[/url) sufficient enough to experience the differences from the last 13 months? Or am I looking at hitting the Qeynos levels before noticing it?

I think that the poster above who mentioned the choose-you-own-adventure mode (aka Fighting Fantasy, aka Tunnels and Trolls solo adventures) had a really good point. Give players branching quests, where they make choices as they go through quest trees as opposed to only having one-shots and quest chains.

Vary the rewards, the faction, etc depending on what choices the player makes. Sure, a lot of people will still just go check out allakhazams or thottbot or whatever website to min/max the reward that suits them best, but still, requiring choices to be made through a quest tree would make the quests ever-so-slightly more interactive than they are now.

As for voice, make it an option at most. I hate most voice acting in games, particularly hearing American or Australian accents in fantasy games - it's incredibly immersion-breaking. The poster who mentioned that text is easy to change, voice samples are not also had a good point.  They also take up tons of space.

Do you think a Gibson-esque cyberspace could come from this evolution? More people are spending more time in these games, involving more real-life money, relationships, legal issues, etc. WoW goes 5-10 million, next innovation goes 50 million and impacts economies, then a 500 million+ environment, beyond a game, home to everyone/everything with a computer (corporations, banks, legally recognised property, criminals, elections, etc)?

I started playing MMOGs because of my interest in 3D worlds, rather than coming from MUDs, RPGs or pen-and-paper (though I had a little bit of all three). Prior to the Internet boom, I had read all of William Gibson's books and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. I grew up playing in 3D wireframe spaces on the C64, such as Elite and Mercenary. I was a computer journalist when Doom and Windows 95 were released, and envisaged a "3D OS" convergence of both kinds of environments, via the Internet. I used Worlds Inc's Worlds Chat and Alpha World, played Tribes and SubSpace. Then I bought EverQuest because a review said you could live in this 3D world, fight stuff, make stuff or just go fishing (3D OS! Cyberspace!).

Some Gibson/Stephenson elements are now real: wireheads dropping dead in cybercafes, PK IRL, the presence of shady industry like IGE and the farmers, Second Life's transactions, cultural differences expressed in choice of environment, etc. The Internet boom itself followed the pattern of persistent worlds: lots of failures, with the occasional big leap forward. An MMOG is like a minority 3D OS on top of a network mostly used for 2D apps, but further "disruptive innovations" and exponential growth would surely change this.

I think that dream is too big not to get chased by people. The Second Life guys, and the There guys, for example, explicitly set out with that as the goal. The Accelerating Change Institute is planning sessions on defining the metaverse protocol -- this year.

The problem with branching quests is that you end up having to generate exponentially increasing amounts of content (depending how many layers deep the branching goes) in order to produce a linearly increasing amount of play time.  Any given player will play through 5 of the quests in your binary tree structure and in so doing lock himself out of another 26.  And MMOGs already have trouble keeping up with the demand for content.

On the back of my copy of Neuromancer is a quote calling it "the future as nightmare". But I agree it's going to happen, I just wonder if it will come out of proprietary MMOG innovations (including Second Life, etc) or a standard like a VRML/Metaverse protocol. It will be interesting to see what the millions of people who were noobs in WoW get into next.

Metaverse is the Stephenson word for it, which I forgot. I guess Gibson's word cyberspace is now butchered beyond recognition.

If you think like that. We know my opinion. The millions of noobs who were into Starcraft III got into WoW. Next? Starcraft 2.

MMOGs need to hit the consoles before they truly break down walls. Voice communication, standardized platforms, the polish of most console titles - these are needs the genre has and hasn't yet acquired. Sure, FFXI and Phantasy Star Online exist, but they're too limited a field. They need to make a Halo MMOG instead of a next Planetside.  Not that I would know whether a Halo MMOG is in the works, but that's the sort of thing that would blow the current idea of a market out of the water. Too bad harddrives aren't standard on the 360. I expect the PS3 to blaze new ground in this particular area.

While I don't really like some of these ideas, it's just the inevitable outcome of a hard fought war against simplification.. 100 Million+ market installation versus 15 Million or so. Twenty Five Million if you count people that only play Blizzard games.  :evil:

Edit: Also, something's been bothering me. Localization. There are at LEAST 10 MMOGs out in Japan and Korea based on existing IP that America has interest in, but they don't localize it. It's not like they have voices to re-record. Maybe it's the lack of people that bought a PS2 harddrive. Or a lack of Square games on PC in America. But I for one think there's a good niche waiting to be filled with localized titles. Can we say Front Mission Online?

Exactly, I called this narrative++ (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/1099) because it isn't really a different model to develop content. It's just explonential more work. so it's a possbililty that must be used cautiously and appropriately.

Branching quests aren't where the foundamental point is. The fundamental point is about making a game revolve around stories and characters. DISLODGING the quest mechanics from being just level-up ease of use. And make them focus on the story itself, the immersion. Not on the power growth. This is all in the two articles I linked above.

They are finding they can't get back into non-massively multiplayer games. At least that's what the ones I've talked to said. WoW blew their minds, even if they no longer play it. But they don't know about any previous MMOGs or MUDs or anything - as far as they are aware, Blizzard has just invented the MMOG and the other things we call MMOGs are some kind of obscure geek thing (perhaps how many EQ1 players saw MUDs). They don't want Starcraft 2 unless it's World of Starcraft.

Goddamn my post was filled with problems.

Warcraft III -> WoW -> SCII. That's what I thought in my head at least.

Anyway, sure, Blizzard invented the dungeon crawler and RTS also. Right.

Also, they don't need World of Starcraft. They just need WoW expansions. Diablo Online would work better than WoS anyway. Starcraft would just be Warcraft in space. I wonder where I've heard that.

That's been precisely my dilemma since 5 minutes into UO :)

And thanks for the info on the Accerating Change Institute and the Gibson/Stephenson refs. Forgot about those, so time to do me some re-reading.

Briefly, I won't recapitulate my various thoughts on story, beyond saying that I agree with much of what has been said here on the subject.  I will say that story is one of many things that can be improved to improve games in general, and MMOs in particular.  I'd also point to another Raph post (http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=257) and the linked talk about what he calls Moore's Wall. (http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/moore.shtml)  I commend the transcript too you, for all that it is a bit dry, and Sturgeon's Law gets mangled in the transcription.

I will recount what I said in the discussion thread on Raph's site.  A couple years back I was harping on the need for better project management in MMOs.  I'll add to that the need for the creation of better methodologies of game building and better business design toward the end of reducing the production costs of games in general and MMOs in particular.  I'm talking more about actual business practices and working methods here than I am about things like player generated content.  As long as these games remain big-budget large team affairs, it will be difficult to improve the level of artistry, and increase the frequency of innovation in the game design proper, including innovations like player content.

I'll also add that new innovations in game design aren't really the problem for MMOs.  I know from playing M59 that this medium, to use Haemish's jargon, isn't using the innovations it began with, never mind the innovations that the MUD world before it created.

I have a new principle.

Not only I want the story back. But I also want all the related content soloable *from the beginning to end*. And absolutely free from time constraints. The game should be enjoyable whether I have ten minutes, an hour or five hours. Duoing should be the norm.

I'm writing lots about it, but it's my new conclusion.

It seems to me that, while a lot more work, branching quests would win hearts and minds. Thanks for the education in the terms. Chain quests are boring, and have been done to death. THey are the lazy Devs tool. IMO. So what if its more work! Heloo!! Thats what they get paid to do! Seriously, how is it that people can complain and say its too much work, when games are making 10's of million s of dollars a month?! I KNOW the Dev tools they use to assemble Quests isnt so pathetic that they cant bang out a nice 10-ending Quests in a couple weeks. The story would be easy enough compared to the rest. Toss 2 people at it. The re-playability of it could be enormous if done right.

Then you don't want this genre anymore. That's basically we're you're headed, right back to old school RPG, which still has story and content relevant to it far more advanced than MMORPGs have.

That's not a bad thing of course. I just have long wished that people who don't like the large-scale realtime multiplayer aspects of this genre would find a genre more conducive to their preferences. Otherwise, we'll continue getting what we're seeing: smaller and smaller "massive" until there's no massive left.

That this is what a lot of people seem to want (given the success of some titles over another) just means that it's going to happen. But it'll also mean that, at some point, there's going to be a clear dilineation between real "massive" and just "online". GW and WoW are still massive after a fashion, but less so. DDO is almost not massive at all. Meanwhile, ATITD and Eve are truly massive, though for much narrower crowds.

MMORPGs have always been niche. They're getting more popular because the popular titles are getting less massive.

Oh, how I define "massive": real economies with thousands of concurrent inputs and many different playable positions within a value chain. How I define "online": being able to play a combat role with a few or a few dozen other people in activities containing some objectives and an eventual single big one.

Yeah WoW is pretty small.

Adjacent play is what casual players have been saying for years would break the genre open. Someone actually does it and now its boo hoo hoo the massive is leaving?

There are two things online can bring to gaming beyond just getting together in a room and playing with networked computers.

The first is the you don't need to be physically proximate. Fine, they all do this.

The second is you can design a game where you still have a shared experience and goals but don't have to be time proximate.

Yes it probably won't throw out as many social hooks as forced time proximity, but it also opens the available playstyles, ergo.. a more massive and less homogeneous world.

I'd write more, but my available time is up.

But that's not what I want :)

I'm one of those who want these games truly massive. And the freedom of the sandbox. Simulating different aspects instead of just combat.

But I also "want" each part to be placed where it belongs. Imho, a good story REQUIRES soloability or to be played at max by four players. Not more, or the story goes to hell. This isn't a mmorpg, by itself. But, in fact, this would happen within a larger structure that gives the dimension of the mmorpg.

So what's the whole project? It's simple. Make the advancement through the story and part of your character as the best experience as possible (very small groups, duos or solo. focus on the immersiveness). Then, beside the mandatory advancement through the story, you attack two different "branches" (the real game). One is the PvP persistent world. With its complexity and economy. The Sandbox in all its undisclosed potential. And another is the larger-scale, mandatory grouping PvE. This latter one is connected with the PvP but, as a fundamental trait, it won't allow your character to gain directly more power.

The long version is here (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/1104). And when I say long, I mean it.

The second line defines the first.

And you of all people know I don't think this is the wrong course for one part of the genre to go. I'm all about options, either within a game or within the genre. There's enough entertainment to go around. I don't believe every player who's ever launched anything with "MMO*" in its description has to be compelled to play every one. Someone who loves SL may feel imprisoned in WoW. Someone who loves WoW may wonder just what the heck to do in SL. I do not believe in One Game to Bind Them All.

But obviously more people will go to one game than others. It's the nature of competition. WoW is only not "time-proximate" from 1-59. After that it's only not time-proximate for folks not continuing to advance their characters in Raid or Rank gear. That the 1-59 could take a long time for some to finish, and that their enjoyment will run out before then, bespeaks mostly of what "casual" really is in MMORPGs. And WoW is successful, like GW, because it got casual right.

WoW-style diku is the way things will go for people who just want diversionary entertainment. The other split-off from the genre will be based on those seeking more immersion. The former is probably going to make more money than the latter, but it's already been proven there's enough room for both.

Nor one term apparently, since  you don't feel that massive applies to them all in equal measure. I am only objecting to defining one as massive and the other not based upon playstyle because to do so has a pejorative feel to it.

Didn't someone already define "massive" as the largest collection of elf boobs in one spot possible?  :evil:

I never said either game wasn't massive. It's just a question of degree. And that depends on what metric's being used to measure it. I tried to do so in this table (http://www.darniaq.com/phpNews/news.php?action=fullnews&showcomments=1&id=99), to knowlingly subjective results.

But please don't misunderstand and think I'm making a value judgement. I don't walk around saying "nya nya, my game is more massive than your's!" Shit. How could I?! I, like many here, average at best four or five months in one game, and that not necessarily exclusive. It's why I continually say there's enough fun for everyone based on the options. It's why I always say there's no one game to bind us all.

I find WoW less massive than SL, by orders of magnitude, but much more massive than Starcraft or Battlefront 2. That's all.

Okay, I'll bite.  Lemme ask the question most ex-SWG players I know still wonder:

Why not build more content into the game instead of changing the rules literally every single publish, if not every hot fix during the first year? 

My perspective: You changed the rules constantly and created the little bitch mongers (aka the jedi forums) where all this whining begat even more drastic changes, convincing someone upstairs that the only way to "fix" it is to change the game again to the point where there is no SWG game left, it's something else.

Raph-

Great article.  My small group in law school is doing an online worlds presentation and I assigned this as reading for the entire class  8-)  I'll tell you if I get any good comments.

Would this be the same as the Harvard reference I mentioned on the blog?

I stand by for correction but I understand that Raph left well before the game went live. No part of the question is answerable by him since he was not there.

You need to have more facts at your fingertips or you embarrass your self on these boards with questions like that. That is why I mostly lurk.

Yeah...but like the comment said, it was me assigning it, but the whole class was still supposed to read it (it was "the students set the curriculum" day).  A lot of people here (admittedly, this Cyberlaw class is full of the techiest of the techies) have said they are already love your work  :-)  You should meet some of the Berkman Center people here sometime, you would really like them.

More than willing to make mistakes, but lurkers never accomplish anything, nor find out those answers in my experience.  He posted a comment relevant to the genre, so I asked.  I'm sure if he has a desire to post a response it would be forthcoming.  As late as Sept 2005 Raph posted on SWG forums that he was the Creative Director for SOE.  In addition, he has probably a good scale of insight into the culture of SOE, if not the SWG teams that have cycled through the various quarters.  The question is relevant to me.

A more accurate response is what are you trying to accomplish.  Not much I see.

Perhaps I was intentionally ignoring the hostile tone of your question to a Red Name, and giving you one possible, easy, non-insulting reason (among many) as to why I think you will not receive an answer.

I officially moved out of the Creative Director role in July of that year (which was literally a couple of days after launch; some think that I got the job post-SWG, but in fact, I was offered it months before and chose not to take it until SWG had launched). I was still involved, to a gradually lessening degree, until Sept or so. So I was involved in planning mounts, vehicles, and cities, and I was involved in the Warren. By the time Holocron drops for Jedi came out, I was not actively on the team. What's more, I have been at arm's length to the title ever since, because to do otherwise would be very disruptive to the guys who have charge of it now.

As far as your question, I of course have to be politic about answering it, but I'd answer with "we did add content" -- cf the aforementioned Warren -- and "content depends on systems being solid underneath" -- such as better content tools, which we now have, and such as fixing the bugs you cited.

It's not really a complicated answer...

Thanks for the answer.  My tone was never intended to be hostile, FTR.  Thanks again.