My melancholy midnight MMOG meanderings.

[Kitsune]

Back when EverQuest was still in beta and the planes were still largely mysterious, I had my own Vision for them.  I had a Vision of places that magicians could teleport to, each plane an assortment of zones.  Some of them would be areas for fighting and questing, of course, but the part that excited me was the thought that some of the zones would be devoted to cities, places that only the uber mages could go, filled with awesome sights and just generally a hangout spot for magicians of all races.  I was thinking of Planescape, basically.  Then EQ was released and the planes turned out to just be a place to beat on monsters and I was very sad.

If I ever made a MMOG, I would go out of my way to create places in it that were made solely for people of certain professions.  Forest retreats only reachable by rangers and druids, hidden thief and necromancer guilds in the shadows of cities, lofty dimensions of magic and deities that casters and clerics can reach.  In each of these places, I would spread an abundance of quests designed for parties of those professions.  Groups of thieves would rob places, groups of clerics would confront threats to their gods, and so on.  I would try to encourage a sense of community within a class, to encourage a server's necromancers to group together, know each other by name.

Out in the wilderness, of course, you'd have your usual holy trinity parties, but through these class-specific areas and quests, I wanted to free the players from the yoke of the 'balanced party' for a while, to let a party of warriors run free and stomp asses without having to worry about protecting the squishies or who'll be healing them, to let mages have magical duels with lots of kabooms and not fear some burly monster smashing their faces in.  By restricting the admission to these areas and access to these quests to specific classes, it would be possible to create quests and battles balanced so that the presence of the other classes would be unnecessary.  At least, such would be my hope.

Of course, odds are good against that ever coming to pass.  Who wants to give me fifty mil to make a MMOG?

[rk47]

Hmm spending a lot of time to satisfy a niche class seems to be below the priority of devs. You have a point though, Horde towns and Alliance towns is a start (in WoW), in a medieval setting such restriction often involves God mode guards or named Elites that one shot people. But specific classes having access to certain areas is kind of tricky...I'd say why not factions restricted area for a start? (minus the grind of course.) Wow has them but they hardly conflict with each other, sort of disappointing. Except for AB AV or BGs....there's not much world conflict factions going on.

[Ratman_tf]

When I first started playing AO, I had visions of doing missions and futhering the cause of Omni-Tek. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that I'd just be grinding faction tokens. 

POTBS seems to have a bit more oomph in that departments, since PvE can actually impact the other factions. (From what I understand of it, I'm only about 5 leves into the game...)

[rk47]

ah yeah that too , faction affecting the game world. I kinda wish Alliance v Horde thing is more than just instanced Battlegrounds but more about World conquest PVP for resource nodes and quest nodes etc.

[eldaec]

, it would be possible to create quests and battles balanced so that the presence of the other classes would be unnecessary.  At least, such would be my hope.

Of course, odds are good against that ever coming to pass.  Who wants to give me fifty mil to make a MMOG?

I'm pretty sure the only way to do this is by balancing the classes so that there is no holy trinity (see CoH) rather than the quests. Otherwise, you need 12 times more content to satisfy each class. Plus you limit access to that content to people who know enough other people of the same class, requiring bigger guilds and pissing off people who play unpopular classes.

And so long as you can succeed with the 8 defender/cleric/priest group, everyone usually gets excitable enough anyway, even without a special quest.

[Trippy]

WoW kind of has that for druids with Moonglade. Other classes can travel there but rarely do while Druids can get a teleport spell to go directly there.

[Venkman]

Heck, Engineers get that too. How many people go to Toshley's Station anymore

In all seriousness, class-specific zones are a cool idea, and can work if you either minimize the number of classes altogether (going with diversity within the class rather than arbitrarily split skills across different classes) or group classes into archetypes. Thinking about launch-EQ2, you could do a Mage, Fighter, etc specific zones.

Yes, people will talk about the resource load. But heck, there's been faction specific zones for a long while. The key is to not forever prevent others from visiting these places. Just make it some heavy amount of up front work that can be reversed (like the betrayal stuff in EQ2, faction work in EQ1, etc.).

I think the inefficient method is how WoW split factions (and others have in the past). You should be able to unlock access to everywhere with enough effort in my opinion.

[Ratman_tf]

Shit. WoW locks a good chunk of their content away behind the raid barrier. For whateverpercent of the subs who can actually do that stuff.

[ajax34i]

I'd like to see such areas, but rather than blocking all but the few select classes from entering, I'd just make it inconvenient for the majority of the classes.  Stuff like, require invisibility potion if you don't have stealth to enter the rogue area, etc.  Some mechanism, consummable, repeatable quest with short term buff, or something, to let everyone enter, and function inside (with disabilities).

WoW could do something like this with the Emerald Dream plane, but I think they'll open it to everyone, unrestricted once you're keyed, if they put it in.

[Draegan]

I recently just tried to push and doe the raid content in WOW.  I basically go half way through on a 2-3 a night schedule and I couldn't bare it anymore and got bored.

[Mrbloodworth]

Dosn't AOC do just this? IE: The rich part of town where thieves can steal, kill and break into houses.

[eldaec]

Shit. WoW locks a good chunk of their content away behind the raid barrier. For whateverpercent of the subs who can actually do that stuff.

Thing is WoW promises that content to everyone.

Only 3% might see it. But 50% think they are going to see it.

[shiznitz]

I agree that the way to go is design areas with certain classes in mind and make it easier for those classes to enter, but don't close it off to anyone. Give every player a path to gain admittance, if they choose.

[Righ]

This thread reminds me of Hyu.

[Morfiend]

Shit. WoW locks a good chunk of their content away behind the raid barrier. For whateverpercent of the subs who can actually do that stuff.

Thing is WoW promises that content to everyone.

Only 3% might see it. But 50% think they are going to see it.

I believe your numbers are WAY off. There was some astonishing number of people who have seen the majority of content. Now, yeah there is a select very high content, like Illidan, who the majority wont see, but when people try and make it seem like all raid content is unreachable by Joe Player, it just not true.

[Draegan]

Many players see Kara and ZA.
Some people see Mag/Gruul
Some people see some SSC/TK
Not many people see MH/BT

[Righ]

I believe your numbers are WAY off. There was some astonishing number of people who have seen the majority of content. Now, yeah there is a select very high content, like Illidan, who the majority wont see, but when people try and make it seem like all raid content is unreachable by Joe Player, it just not true.

There are a large number of raiders who are adamant that most people who play WoW also raid, and yet all it takes is to run a few iterations of /who during prime time for a week or two to discover that on any given realm raiding is an uncommon pastime.  Of course, for those college kids on a fast track to a job flipping burgers, its important to sell the idea that time-intensive raiding is what game developers should cater to.

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-interpret-wowjutsu-numbers.html

[Soukyan]

Many players see Kara and ZA.
Some people see Mag/Gruul
Some people see some SSC/TK
Not many people see MH/BT

Not knowing any of those acronyms is proof.

[Draegan]

Many players see Kara and ZA.
Some people see Mag/Gruul
Some people see some SSC/TK
Not many people see MH/BT

Not knowing any of those acronyms is proof.

Magtheridon - Tier 4 Small Raid Zone
Gruul - Tier 4 Small Raid Zone
SSC - Serpentshrine Cavern Tier 5
TK - Tempest Keep Tier 5
MH - Mount Hyjal Tier 6
BT - Black Temple Tier 6

[Venkman]

There are a large number of raiders who are adamant that most people who play WoW also raid, and yet all it takes is to run a few iterations of /who during prime time for a week or two to discover that on any given realm raiding is an uncommon pastime. 

You really want to run that for about six months at least, at least twice a day (to get the peak and valley concurrency), or even just run it for a week every three weeks for six months. This accounts for seasons, school in/out, holidays, etc. Plus Wowjutsu can be wildly inaccurate at times.

One thing I never got about WarcraftRealms is why they don't have something like the Raid parser thing. They're collecting the data as it is and have been doing so since early 2005.

[Righ]

I've never understood why some people seem to want to measure this stuff so desperately and never commit themselves to building the tools to do it. It would only require a couple of cheap boxes and a handful of accounts on a residential broadband network to do this unattended, persistently and accurately for every realm. Frankly it would be less of an abuse of trial accounts to use them for this purpose than for RMT spamming, though I'm not suggesting anybody do such a thing.

[Ratman_tf]

WoW could do something like this with the Emerald Dream plane, but I think they'll open it to everyone, unrestricted once you're keyed, if they put it in.

They should make it so you have to do a quest to permanently become a female Night Elf Hunter to enter the Emerald Dream.

Cause that would be 

[spiralyguy]

The problem with class-specific zones is in the math.

Zone A - Available to all classes, avg playtime 10 hours.
Zone B - Available to one class, avg playtime 10 hours.

You'd have to make as many zone b's as you had classes in order to satisfy the same # of play hours.  Well not quite, the balancing point for what players would notice/enjoy more is probably a bit more in favor of class-specific zones (i.e. if class specific zones were only 50% of the playtime they would likely be considered cooler anyway), but it would still require a great deal more resources.

Course you probably know that already...

[Ratman_tf]

Dunno. It kind of boggles me that level based stratification means that there are huge chunks of areas that are hardly used anymore. (From Goldshire, to most of the froob areas in AO, to Lough Derg) Most players wind up jammed into a very few amount of areas as they reach endgames.

So most real estate in MMORPGs seems designed to be very inefficient at player useage.

[spiralyguy]

Dunno. It kind of boggles me that level based stratification means that there are huge chunks of areas that are hardly used anymore. (From Goldshire, to most of the froob areas in AO, to Lough Derg) Most players wind up jammed into a very few amount of areas as they reach endgames.

So most real estate in MMORPGs seems designed to be very inefficient at player useage.

Well... yes and no.  I think it's the mid-level areas that really suffer from what you're talking about, and I've thought about this alot before because I think it's a pretty big problem.

First the no part:  You could say WoW wasted a lot of resources designing so many different start locations.  However, I can't tell you how many RPG's I've quit simply because I re-rolled too many times and got tired of the beginning.  Start char, get to lvl 10, notice glaring weakness or annoyance, reroll, get to level 10, notice glaring weakness, reroll, get to lvl 10, get so tired of doing the same 1-10 that I just quit.  I ruined Titan quest because I rerolled so much, never did see the end of the game but I can't bare to go through the start again.  So I think WoW got that aspect right.

However, there's certainly a ton of low-mid level content in every RPG that is just rotting.  It's a tough call how to fix that problem.  Oblivion tried with it's "our world scales to your level" mechanic, but people mostly hated that because it didn't feel like you were getting more powerful.  I've thought at length about the problem but haven't been able to come up with any solution.  I think the problem falls right in there with I'm lvl 45 and my friend is lvl 20 so we can't really play together.  How do you bridge that gap so that everything is good for everyone while still giving players a sense of progression?  tough problem.

[Akkori]

twitch

[Ratman_tf]

However, there's certainly a ton of low-mid level content in every RPG that is just rotting.  It's a tough call how to fix that problem.  Oblivion tried with it's "our world scales to your level" mechanic, but people mostly hated that because it didn't feel like you were getting more powerful.  I've thought at length about the problem but haven't been able to come up with any solution.  I think the problem falls right in there with I'm lvl 45 and my friend is lvl 20 so we can't really play together.  How do you bridge that gap so that everything is good for everyone while still giving players a sense of progression?  tough problem.

Well, if power and reward ranges were a bit more forgiving, and I'm not even talking about abandoning the levelup paradigm (although that would make it even easier and more effective to implement), but just to reduce the amount of difference between a level 10 and a 20 or a 30 or a 40...

Like you said, getting tired of the same old beginner areas... maybe if different zones weren't gated for power advancement, more than just to give players new and different environments to play in.

And it's been done effectivley in other games.

Bhurgle! 

[Aez]

twitch

And/or a deck like (MTGO) skill progression with barely noticeable stats progression.

[Raguel]

Back when EverQuest was still in beta and the planes were still largely mysterious, I had my own Vision for them.  I had a Vision of places that magicians could teleport to, each plane an assortment of zones.  Some of them would be areas for fighting and questing, of course, but the part that excited me was the thought that some of the zones would be devoted to cities, places that only the uber mages could go, filled with awesome sights and just generally a hangout spot for magicians of all races.  I was thinking of Planescape, basically.  Then EQ was released and the planes turned out to just be a place to beat on monsters and I was very sad.

If I ever made a MMOG, I would go out of my way to create places in it that were made solely for people of certain professions.  Forest retreats only reachable by rangers and druids, hidden thief and necromancer guilds in the shadows of cities, lofty dimensions of magic and deities that casters and clerics can reach.  In each of these places, I would spread an abundance of quests designed for parties of those professions.  Groups of thieves would rob places, groups of clerics would confront threats to their gods, and so on.  I would try to encourage a sense of community within a class, to encourage a server's necromancers to group together, know each other by name.

Out in the wilderness, of course, you'd have your usual holy trinity parties, but through these class-specific areas and quests, I wanted to free the players from the yoke of the 'balanced party' for a while, to let a party of warriors run free and stomp asses without having to worry about protecting the squishies or who'll be healing them, to let mages have magical duels with lots of kabooms and not fear some burly monster smashing their faces in.  By restricting the admission to these areas and access to these quests to specific classes, it would be possible to create quests and battles balanced so that the presence of the other classes would be unnecessary.  At least, such would be my hope.

Of course, odds are good against that ever coming to pass.  Who wants to give me fifty mil to make a MMOG?

I had a similar idea, but in addition create content such that gives a different experience based on class. It's probably not doable, but it's ok to dream. 

[slog]

Why would anyone want to go to a Zone that was just for one class?  There would be nothing to do there.  MMOs are not Pen and Paper RP.  They are monster and player bashing games.

[Ratman_tf]

Why would anyone want to go to a Zone that was just for one class?  There would be nothing to do there.  MMOs are not Pen and Paper RP.  They are monster and player bashing games.

Thanks for the insight, Cletus.

[Viin]

The only way out of this is to remove the artificial leveling process and make things more general - but then you have a 'virtual world' instead of an MMO, which, as we've come to know, is not mass market (at least for now).

When there's such a huge gap between level 10 and 20, there's absolutely no reason for a level 20 to consume content made for a level 10 (but at the same time, the level 20 wants to know they can storm through that area like a god).

Solution?

They already exist, but at the fundamental level they aren't similar to WoW. (See SubSpace, CounterStrike, Team Fortress 2, GuildWars, MTGO, EVE, SWG, ATITD, etc).

[Raguel]

I'd be perfectly fine with getting rid of grinding (which I define as involving both leveling and item-acquisition). The whole point
of the brain-storming I did was to imagine a fantasy mmorpg that was fun, challenging, and didn't involve grinding at all. (well that and I needed something to do whilst battling insomnia  )

I think it's what people refer to as experience-driven design. For example, if I wanted to play a rogue-type character, I'd expect to spend most of my time stealthin, stealin' and swindlin'. What those things were would depend on what socio-economic "class" I was "targeting".  ( I viewed this in the stereotypical merchant, royal, and peasant. I posted this on the old Vanguard boards. I read somewhere that they tried to do something like this, but it got in the way of the grind, lawlz.)

I thought of this as a multi layered game. Eventually what I realized was that I was describing multiple games shoe-horned into one.  There's nothing wrong with that, except that it's probably not practical. I hope I can get at least a handful of my ideas realized in Raph's new project.

[Viin]

I think the best thing to do is a) put everyone on somewhat equal footing, b) lots of options (skills to use, ways to achieve objectives), c) compelling content that works for everyone but *may* require some personal skill to accomplish. (For example, instead of requiring level 50 to unlock a new quest, you have to pass the entrance exam to the assassins guild - which may require planning/executing an assassination without getting caught, or maybe even social engineering to get someone else to do it for you).

Of course, that requires quest designers and more depth in single locations than terrain/spawn generating algorithms.

Edit:

Now that I think about it, I find that MMOs I consider "mature" (ie: for "mature" mmo gamers - folks who have burned out on grinding levels/items) are games that require more thinking and planning outside of the game itself. You use your resources (wikis, forums, etc), social network (guild, enemies, etc), knowledge of the game mechanics (locations, weapon options, guard behavior), knowledge of player behavior (trade hubs, pvpers, etc) to achieve objectives rather than simply following a script that was handed to you (collect A, then B, and DING you win).

[tazelbain]

The idea of mature gaming was part of idea for random skill system idea I posted Dev forum.  Instead of developers designing the classes and skill sets, players would have to build skill structures for themselves.  Basicly applying a explorers mindset to the skill system

Anyway, I think the problem is the Diku tradition has conditioned everyone that MMOGs are marathons.  A doing things just for the fun of it puts them behind in the race.  Even if you only play 2 hours a week, you had better take full advantage of the 2 hours.  So any of these "feel good" ideas are going to get trampled over.