In-game events

[Lucas]

Ok, so, UO used to have the IGM and Seer program, which was quite great, IMO: not only shard-wide events (mostly town-spawns) but also "micro" ones, usually involving smaller RP communities, which could last a few hours or a few days, resembling, let's say, a small D&D module. Of course a lot of ppl cried for favoritism when it came to the "micro" ones, while others always complained that they always missed this kind of stuff (hence the introduction of town criers, for example).

Eventually, EA/Origin dropped the program, which mostly relied on volounteers. Still, I think MMOGs could really improve their experience if something like that is re-introduced.

I'm totally sick of static "holiday events" and crap like that. I would prefer a true "Events staff" taking care or creating macro and micro events, involving a Dev-controlled NPC going into a tavern-town-spaceship-toilet-whatever setting up something. There are of course a lot of potential issues, but I would like to know your opinion about a feature like that.

[Tairnyn]

I dont think live events are feasible given the scale and technical implementation of the current generation of games. Persistent worlds in current games are, for the most part, very static. The kinds of localized events that you discuss are likely to effect very few players on a limited number of servers, which is not a wise investment of employee time from a business perspective. Given the scale of these games, volunteer events are likely to spawn a host of favoritism issues that would be more trouble than they are worth.

To support this kind of dynamic content games will need to not only provide mechanisms for these events to matter for everyone (ripples across the world) but also provide ways for players who weren't a part of the event to understand what happened via the effects that it had. But even so, I have a feeling that most players would become upset with enough elements of the content ("always happens when I'm at work", "the big guilds monopolize the events by getting the word out", "the event changed the world before I could do something I wanted to") that it would be doomed to disgruntled chaos.

I'm all for someone trying it on the scale of today's games, but good luck convincing investors it's worth their time and money given the risk.

[Merusk]

Everyone loves them; except the folks who don't get to participate.   When EQ used to do it you'd find any number of "wtf why was this catered to the level 50 characters" posts, or "wtf why did this mob pwn me when I wanted to level."

Then, you have the problems of needing a staff large enough to do regular events on multiple servers.  Take WoW for example, there's 100 some servers.  If you did an event every month on each server (on different days) the you're doing 3-4 servers a day.  For what level range this month?  Who codes it in, who writes it up, who comes up with the script/ rewards?

Then add-on that you'll have 3/4 of the online population showing-up at whatever event you've got going for the hopes of loot (Because if there's no loot you get the "wtf why did you waste time with this shit, fix bugs/ develop content/ whatever with the money" posts.)  so the server will lag and/ or crash for that locale.

For smaller games these are easy things to do.  EvE does it often enough on their single-server set up, but for the larget games it becomes enough of a headache nobody bothers anymore.

As to the volunteer services, you can blame AOL and EA both on that one.  If you have a "volunteer" program they have to be exactly that.  There can be no mandatory scheduling, and no compensation for the time they give.  As soon as you do one they become an employee and you have to treat them as such (which includs minimum wage.)   With such an erratic base, (due to not being able to say "be here or you're out") planning becomes difficult if not impossible.

[Hutch]

Something else to consider: Dev-controlled npc's are fun and interesting and unusual, but the inevitable massive crowd of players will wreak havoc on the server. The extent of the havoc will vary from game to game, of course.

In WoW, tantrum-throwers protestors have crashed servers.

In CoH, large crowds tend to cause lots of lag (and possible disconnects) but I think their servers hold up pretty well.

Asheron's Call handled large crowds with "portal storms", although I don't know if there are enough people still playing that game to cause one ;)

[Driakos]

In 2003, UO started the EM program. Event Moderator.  Contact positions. They were paid by deliverable, one event, plus one partnered event on another shard was one deliverable.  With a season/arc being 16-32 events. Most of them would have volunteered just to be a part of the program, but the (low) pay, kept things cheap, and legal.

Someone said it earlier, the biggest complaint is from folks who missed out in one way or another.  We couldn't publicize a schedule, you didn't want too many players showing up.  Once (at least in UO) you got over 100 or so, the lag got so bad the event wasn't much fun, regardless of the set-up and planning.  So they were usually spontaneous (but usually the same day/shard each week) with a 10-15 minute window to join, once announced locally on a particular shard.

I think we had 17 at one point, one for each North American shard, then Euro/Drach, and 2 for Oceania (Australia) due to it's awkward time, and the need for a partnered EM.  It was still leagues cheaper than paying a designer(s), engineer(s), and QA to create events.  But, a trade-off. Static quests are repeatable, and always there (in theory), whereas the EM events were transitory.  The events, in my opinion, reduced subscription churn, but I'm not certain if it grew subscriptions.  I think they are an excellent form of retention though.

If you watch out for favoritism, and hire to avoid nepotism, you can keep the program fairly legit. Though, vocal players will argue against that.

[Pendan]

Wish was being designed around events spawned by staff. They started concentrating on this area being the focus of the game a year or so before it shut down. Also the period of time they started throwing out Dave Rickey's design ideas.

[Numtini]

I'd love to see it, but it just doesn't work. People are basically too immature to deal with it. I went to two of these in EQ and they were both the same, a bunch of GMs (or whatever), trying to act out some fairly decent RP events that were going to culminate with some kind of fight. But the reality of the event was 100 or so idiots, mostly from uberguilds, spamming that they should quit the RP crap because it was taking too long and get to the phat loot distribution.

[Tairnyn]

Wish was being designed around events spawned by staff. They started concentrating on this area being the focus of the game a year or so before it shut down. Also the period of time they started throwing out Dave Rickey's design ideas.

Wish introduced a whole new level weridness in that it was so focused on staff-driven events (with the staff often disguised as normal players/NPCs) that it opened the door for anyone to make believe they were a staff member start an event leading players down a garden path of their choosing. It didn't take long for people to make random characters with names related to the storyline that no one was quite sure if they were real events or not.

While I admit that it was interesting and allowed some players to form their own public identities through sheer force of will, there was the potential for a whole new level of grief play that lead many players to ignore events that did not involve well-known characters due to the saturation of fake events in the world. On the other hand, if you made each event character have tell-tale markings you now have red-named idiot beacons that drew in event griefers everywhere they went, leading to inevitable crowds.

Wish had some great pontential on paper but the more I witnessed the reality of players interacting with the events it became apparaent that it could never fly in the live version. Not only does it become logistically difficult, the staff often cycled through 'actors' for each role leading to bizarre inconsistencies and the occasional drama queen that grossly over dramatized certain events. Not to mention the standard crowd of people who detest roleplaying enough to make sure they piss in the cheerios of those participating.

[Stephen Zepp]

EQ tried this with the legends server (the events lasted about a month), and Shadowbane tried it as well. Interestingly to me at least, myself and a core of friends built an entire nation (organization of guilds) around the main SB event, and it affected server game play for about 6 months afterward. Some liked it, some didn't, but to myself, 2 events (initial and follow-on) affected the game world for more than 80% of my lifetime in the game, and was what I had always been waiting for in MMO gaming. Shame it died off into the "places to get phat lewts" that others have posted about.

[tazelbain]

GM events are a poorly scaling band-aid to the problem of static content.  I'd much rather see effort go into make compelling dynamic content than to try an build a bigger band-aid.

[Driakos]

GM events are a poorly scaling band-arid to the problem of static content.  I'd much rather see effort go into make compelling dynamic content than to try an build a bigger band-aid.

Ideally you do both.  Live events are so low cost compared to development, it's almost silly not to have them.  You can produce them, so they take very little effort from a development team.  No resources have to be stolen.

[UnSub]

I'd love to get involved in official in-game events.

However, I live in a timezone that is about 14 hours into (for most of you out there) the future. I no longer have the ability or desire to drag myself out of bed at 3am in the morning to try and take part. As such, I much prefer that real effort gets put into content that is available 24 / 7, even if just for a month.

My 2c.

[Drubear]

Didn't SWG provide guilds with purchasable items to help with events? Treasure chest, race, quest droids? I always thought that was verra kewl and maybe decentralizing the Events via the guild system(s) would be the way to go.

Perhaps even level up the guild (or have it gain points somehow - event attendance?) to allow for phatter lewt distribution items, culminating in the ability to spawn an event instance for the guild event planners to populate.

[CharlieMopps]

A buddy of mines brother used to be an GM for Everquest (the first one) and my buddy told me (yes, it's second hand info) that he could take control of ANY mob with a slash command.
i.e. /gmcontrol A Gnoll Grunt (or whatever)
This command was so they could end exploits involving stuck mobs, and that sort of thing. They weren't supposed to use it to have fun though.
According to my buddy, while visiting his brother he ran around messing with people. logging into mobs and having them act a little more intelligent than they should have been. Targeting your Cleric first... that sort of thing. It was against the rules but I guess the GMs thought of it as a fun way to kill time in between tickets.

After finding this out... some of the "bugs" that would surprise me in game, started to seem a little more suspicious.

[Kitsune]

I think that manpower would better be utilized by having a staff of designers whose sole purpose was the creation of mini-events that could then be implemented into the servers on random timers.  WoW, for example, has outdoor raid spawns that show up from time to time, and CoH has randomly-occurring events like the ghost ship and monster spawns.  Take a team of guys and put them to work forty hours a week doing nothing but creating little events like that, then sprinkle the events across every zone.  That way their time isn't spent running one single event on one single server, but in making events that can be encountered on every server; much more efficient.

[Xanthippe]

I'd wake up in the middle of the night to participate, if I had to.

I love holidays.  Easter egg hunts, trick or treating, questlines with sexy dresses as rewards.... I love fluff.

Club Penguin (my daughter plays) has an event that occurs semiregularly - Rockhopper the pirate appears and gives away phat lewt.  It's a huge hit.

But live events... they're THE BEST.

Now, players can make their own live events, but the only one I've seen that actually worked well was Shadowclan on DAOC.  Shadowclan was (is?) a roleplaying guild made up entirely of kobolds, who, en masse, would surround players and demand tribute be paid or they'd get killed.  (Imagine 30-40 level 10-20s yelling for tribute from a lvl 50 player).

[Signe]

I have to agree.  Lots of fluff and shiny stuff makes me very happy.  I swear I still play EQ2 mostly to find shiny question marks on the floor!

[CharlieMopps]

I think that manpower would better be utilized by having a staff of designers whose sole purpose was the creation of mini-events that could then be implemented into the servers on random timers.  WoW, for example, has outdoor raid spawns that show up from time to time, and CoH has randomly-occurring events like the ghost ship and monster spawns.  Take a team of guys and put them to work forty hours a week doing nothing but creating little events like that, then sprinkle the events across every zone.  That way their time isn't spent running one single event on one single server, but in making events that can be encountered on every server; much more efficient.

You're talking about a team of guys making $60k to $100K+ a year... compaired to GMs that usually get paid minimum wage. Or better yet, get community volunteers that do it for free... ala UO (just make sure that you aren't paying them with ingame items and then take them away so you get sued like UO did... lol)

I'd wake up in the middle of the night to participate, if I had to.

And indeed we did. Many of the best EQ1 events were GM driven mobs... usually dragons... My guildmates all had each others numbers and we'd call each other. In one event an "evil" commander played by a GM tried to storm Freeport with the help of all the evil players (I was on a PVP server) Another GM commander was on the good side and helped us defend. Ironically most guilds were non specific when it came to alignment so it resulted in a lot of Guildmate on Guildmate action.

Edit: spelin

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

SWG is heads and tails above all other games with "events", not only can you get dev support for an event you can also use the "storyteller" system. massive amount of decor of both a static and dynamic nature. NPC's you place (you can even add your own loot to them if you wish).

http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/players/content.vm?id=66938&resource=features

[Aez]

City of heroes did it very well.  They announced it weeks in advance, it was tied in their publicity for the next update.  The events themself were programmed, not gmed.  The rewards were plentyfull but had not real impact on the game.

I don't know if they still do it, I have not followed the game since update 4.

[WindupAtheist]

I could swear I spent some time in UO interacting with some purple-named EA employee who would RP with the community and spawn monsters and crap.  He gave me and some friends sashes labled "Member of the Royal Britannian Guard".  We sold them for a couple million each.  This was like... last year.  They might have gotten rid of the program, whatever it was called this time.  I don't recall hearing about it lately.

[LK]

A friend of mine set me straight during the time I was still awestruck by Anarchy Online's early days where I had a (self-imposed) large role in the going-on's of the plot.  It is really better to create something that all users can experience and participate in.  A World Event in WoW is pretty much the standard I go by now when thinking about creating special, time-specific events.  Manage it programatically instead of using real people.  Machines don't get tired.

Dynamic content though is not the strength of this approach.

[WindupAtheist]

It is really better to create something that all users can experience and participate in.

Yep.  That purple-named UO guy I mentioned was cool and all, but 99.99% of the players never saw him, so why is he worth paying?  Plus the people who sucked Seer cock back in the Clinton Administration were completely insufferable, and the ones who are still around still have a snotty attitude about it.  You and your near-dead vanity guild are not kings of the "RP community" just because you hobnobbed with some slob-ass volunteer a million years ago.  Your "Seer blessed" house is just an ugly shitpile in a forgotten corner of Felucca, and nobody is impressed with the two statues that were placed outside of it with GM powers.  Pricks.

Where was I?

Yeah, gimme some automated content.  The majority of players are never going to get anything meaningful from live events, unless the company has nine thousand event guys on the payroll.  The ratio of players to staff is just too high in an MMO.  Player events for the win anyway.  That was a joust one of the guilds on Atlantic put together yesterday.

[Stephen Zepp]

It is really better to create something that all users can experience and participate in.

and nobody is impressed with the two statues that were placed outside of it with GM powers.  Pricks.

I'm not so sure about that personally--in the ShadowBane stuff I participated in, both the statues as permanent structures (good guy and bad guy), as well as the faction specific town guards were pretty damned cool--I'd have people send me tells from enemy nations (out of char of course) asking for permission just to drop by the Church for screenies ;)