The sky has not fallen (yet)

[Crumbs]

All this talk of WOW comparisons and whether or not it's good to copy:  WOW wasn't exactly an original concept by any means.  The game just flows.   Also addons.

[Hutch]

They thought cinematic story telling and brand would carry them so they could no-effort it everywhere else. They where wrong because MMO's aren't particularly great platforms for telling stories and money spent on stories give a relatively poor return in long term retention.

This has probably been linked elsewhere but it fits here too, A Rant: Enough Of Single-Player MMOs

It's a good thing he labeled that a rant, because that article seems to boil down to "MMOs don't tell stories as well as single-player RPGs, so they shouldn't even try."

Which is horse poop, unless you want all future MMOs to have the storytelling chops of EVE. Which is perfectly valid, don't get me wrong. You just have to have a business plan that makes a profit with EVE's sub numbers.

[Nebu]

It's a good thing he labeled that a rant, because that article seems to boil down to "MMOs don't tell stories as well as single-player RPGs, so they shouldn't even try."

I actually agree with this.  If I want story, I'll play a single player RPG.  In an MMO, I want the players to create the story with the tools provided them in game.  Instead of wasting resources on story, voice acting, and cutscenes, just give me more content, solid combat, and a rich world.  

Sadly, none of this will never happen as today's mainstream gamers want their experience in rails.    GW2 is doing a decent job of bridging the gap... but still feels a bit too much on rails in places. 

[Crumbs]

If I want story, I'll play a single player RPG.  In an MMO, I want the players to create the story with the tools provided them in game.  Instead of wasting resources on story, voice acting, and cutscenes, just give me more content, solid combat, and a rich world.  

This.  A thousand times this.  I create my own characters with their own backstories and that's the foudation of my immersion.  Any story the game throws out breaks the immersion. 

[Nevermore]

It's a good thing he labeled that a rant, because that article seems to boil down to "MMOs don't tell stories as well as single-player RPGs, so they shouldn't even try."

I actually agree with this.  If I want story, I'll play a single player RPG.  In an MMO, I want the players to create the story with the tools provided them in game.  Instead of wasting resources on story, voice acting, and cutscenes, just give me more content, solid combat, and a rich world.  

Sadly, none of this will never happen as today's mainstream gamers want their experience in rails.    GW2 is doing a decent job of bridging the gap... but still feels a bit too much on rails in places. 

What's hilarious about this is the GW2 'personal story' is even more on rails than the TOR class stories since in GW2 you don't even have the illusion of influencing your character's personality like you do in TOR.  Your character will act one way and one way only, regardless of how you might have imagined her in your head.  Oh, and GW2 also has story, (poor) voice acting and (poor) cutscenes.

[Ingmar]

I'm sure nobody is shocked to know that I completely disagree with Nebu here. I want story in multiplayer just as much as I do in single. The setting in particular needs to be at least somewhat coherent, compelling, and relevant to what I'm doing for me to be interested. That's the biggest part of why EVE always fell so flat for me - they seemed to put a fair amount of effort into having a setting with factions, etc., but it was 100% irrelevant to anything you'd ever actually do. That's why I couldn't stand Rift for more than a couple hours, and why Champions Online was such a piece of crap.

[Venkman]

Um, GW1 was the largest western MMO after WoW. It sold million and is still actively played today by what appears to be a decent number of people?

Played, yes. So is UO. Printing their own money in a way that other companies, especially niave ones, create new business plans in the hopes of emulating? No. They're doing well. And kudos to them because GW1 was fun and competently crafted. But the Guild Wars brand isn't the blue light to the moths that "anything from Blizzard" or "KOTOR" or "Star Wars" are. Hence my skepticism that they can be put in the same "also doing a AAA MMO like WoW" category that SWTOR was in.

And to Draegen's points raised after, as soon as you announce you're "making an MMO", you're immediately like WoW or doing it wrong, which means inheriting conventions that are at the heart of why this genre can't really evolve. The commitments you need to make in building an MMO are simply too expensive to take too many chances. Heck, this is true for most genres, and especially true for Blizzard.

When you're making an MMO, you and in the process of creating the game, the public doesn't even know you exist really.  You should have all those things on the list ready to go when you present yourself to the public after a few years of dev time.

Trouble is, big development budgets are granted only when the promise of success is believable. In order to get there, you're either showing up with a lot of unarguable precedent (big IP, reknowned studio, "like X but with Y", investor spport, guaranteed bond from a niave government, etc), or you are already so successful you don't even need to ask for investment.

Most only have "unarguable precedent" to lean on. :smile:

Those things all come with rules. Brands/IP have rules about how it can look, act and feel. "Like X but with Y" thinking is rooted rules already established by your reference experience. Free money from investors comes with their own performance milestones and metrics, and only being granted because you proved your case on precedent. Blizzard is a master at all of this.

So while your eventual audience isn't yet aware of you, everything you are already doing is bound by the constraints put in place just to get started.

The key is to differentiate by making it better. Because it's far easier to get funding for that than it is to get funded for something new.

[Spiff]

What's hilarious about this is the GW2 'personal story' is even more on rails than the TOR class stories since in GW2 you don't even have the illusion of influencing your character's personality like you do in TOR.  Your character will act one way and one way only, regardless of how you might have imagined her in your head.  Oh, and GW2 also has story, (poor) voice acting and (poor) cutscenes.

You can also completely ignore that personal story and still have a great and (perhaps even more) fun game to play, if you ignore it in SWOR you might as well go watch paint dry.

P.S.: There is also a bit of 'kill the puppy'/'hug the puppy' choices going on in some GW2 cut scenes, nothing on the 'level' of SWOR, just sayin' it's not completely devoid of that like you're making out.

[Nevermore]

What's hilarious about this is the GW2 'personal story' is even more on rails than the TOR class stories since in GW2 you don't even have the illusion of influencing your character's personality like you do in TOR.  Your character will act one way and one way only, regardless of how you might have imagined her in your head.  Oh, and GW2 also has story, (poor) voice acting and (poor) cutscenes.

You can also completely ignore that personal story and still have a great and (perhaps even more) fun game to play, if you ignore it in SWOR you might as well go watch paint dry.

P.S.: There is also a bit of 'kill the puppy'/'hug the puppy' choices going on in some GW2 cut scenes, nothing on the 'level' of SWOR, just sayin' it's not completely devoid of that like you're making out.

The only choices I ever saw in GW2 were related to that 'personality' system they have, and the only times I ever got personality choices were in a few pure text dialogs.  In practice it added almost nothing to the character's personality.

P.S.: Personally I don't see why anyone would want to play a game were you can just skip the story entirely, but then Eve is still running so I guess there's a market for that.  Of course since WoW subs > Eve subs I can see why some people might get the idea that a game that provides a story for players might attract more players than a pure sandbox.

[Nebu]

I'm sure nobody is shocked to know that I completely disagree with Nebu here.

It's ok.  I still love you.   

[Zetor]

(snip)
If I want story, I'll play a single player RPG.  In an MMO, I want the players to create the story with the tools provided them in game.  Instead of wasting resources on story, voice acting, and cutscenes, just give me more content, solid combat, and a rich world. 

A bit of a tangent, but have you checked out player-made content systems in games that have them? (COH, STO, and sorta EQ2 if we're sticking to AAA stuff) Yeah, Sturgeon's Law applies, but still...

[Draegan]

Thats silly though. 
WOW has swords and dragons!  Our game can't have those.
...

If I had to copy from the MMO Market and iterate on that I would copy:
1.  WOW's LFD/LFR system.
...

This isn't a game design - it's just a list of features. There's no actual game in what you described. As in there is no actual game concept or any coherency.

What I'm saying is start with an actual game design. Of course you can copy some aspects of other games or go with some proven ideas, you don't have to be 100% new with everything, but rather than some recipe that says take X from game A and Y from game B come up with a game concept and then borrow the systems that make sense in that context. Companions are cool, but it only makes sense to borrow companions in game where companions make sense. LFD? So you've decided your game has dungeons run by fixed groups, before even deciding what game you are making. (And you've ruled out making Minecraft, Eve, etc)

I didn't realize you are going down to pure basics.  I'd assume we're talking about an avatar based game where you kill bad guys.  Then have options to kill bad guys with more than one person.  Essentially what every single MMORPG that is coming out in the next year or two have.

[Sjofn]

I would say it's pretty hard to have a "rich world" with no adequate story whatsoever. DAoC is the only one I can really think of off the top of my head, and they got away with it because they set it in a place where the "lore" was pretty much already known by basically everyone. It's also part of why, I suspect, Albion was the Fat Realm on so many servers. We generally "know" Albion better than Midgard, and definitely better than Hibernia. :P

A Star Wars game might get away with it in the same way for the same reasons, of course. But that's not what they decided to do. And personally, I am glad, because that would not have interested me at all. 

[Fordel]

Is that a backwards jab at my beloved two mushroom town?

[Sjofn]

Nah, not really, it's just most Americans I know can tell you all about King Arthur, tell you some stuff about Vikings, and will sort of shift their weight and go "I dunno, leprechauns?" about Ireland.

[Fordel]

Next you'll say my forest isn't cursed at all!

[Sjofn]

Cursed Forests do not have unicorns. I will believe this until I die.

[UnSub]

It's a good thing he labeled that a rant, because that article seems to boil down to "MMOs don't tell stories as well as single-player RPGs, so they shouldn't even try."

I actually agree with this.  If I want story, I'll play a single player RPG.  In an MMO, I want the players to create the story with the tools provided them in game.  Instead of wasting resources on story, voice acting, and cutscenes, just give me more content, solid combat, and a rich world.  

What's a "rich world"?

I disagreed with the RPS rant because it ignored the fact that a lot of noise was made about MMOs having bad stories, no-one reads the quest content, etc etc. There's a group of people out there who want the option of playing single player OR with friends / groups at a moment's notice.

[Koyasha]

I disagreed with the RPS rant because it ignored the fact that a lot of noise was made about MMOs having bad stories, no-one reads the quest content, etc etc. There's a group of people out there who want the option of playing single player OR with friends / groups at a moment's notice.

I actually find myself agreeing with it.  The things I remember in MMOs aren't generally the story.  ...well ok, actually I do remember the story because I've always been a huge story nerd, but not the kind of 'spoonfed through quests' story that any newer MMO has offered.  For an MMO, EverQuest's story (such as it was) was, I think, far better than most recent games, including SWTOR.  SWTOR's story (stories, actually) is pretty good...for a single-player game.  Class stories?  Those ARE single-player (because no one else can even influence them, even if you can bring someone to help you).  Planet storylines are pretty neat, but they too are basically single-player even when they can be played multiplayer, because the dialogue system is a massive fail due to not actually adding anything when there's multiple characters involved - it just randomizes which character gets to pick the next line of dialogue.  EQ's overall story was better for an MMO setting because it wasn't something for one person to 'do', it was just scattered across the world as dialogue or items or books and such.  For those who cared about it, it was pretty awesome.

But none of this has ever really gone anywhere toward what MMO's could do if they focused on the MMO aspect instead of trying to give us more single-player content to consume.  I don't know how to do it better, and I get it.  It's hard.  It's a matter of figuring out how to actually take advantage of a medium that has very different strengths and weaknesses to traditional games.  But come on, we've been at it for 14 years.  Early Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, Shadowbane, and EVE are the only games that come to mind off-hand that actually did very much with the medium that is special and unique to this medium, and really tried to build to the strengths of the MMO rather than shoehorning single-player stuff into an MMO setting.  Also maybe Lineage II and its castle sieges, I guess?  Wouldn't know since despite playing for months I never saw one. 

If developers would put money and time into figuring out 'how can I make having 2,000+ players online at the time significant in a gameplay sense?' and 'how can a persistent world be an advantage?' we might start to get games that actually play to the strengths of an MMO.  But right now having 2,000+ players online at the same time has no meaning because 1,970-1,995-ish of those have no direct influence on any other player at any given time.  A persistent world isn't an advantage because it doesn't ever change, and the actions of others while you're offline have no effect on you.  I don't really know what mechanics can be used to take advantage of this.  Like I said, it's hard.  But somebody really needs to start by asking "We have a couple thousand people online at the same time, and the world is always-on.  What can we do with this that cannot be done without those conditions?"  And some kind of story can probably be worked into this.  But not a single-player story, which is what we've been getting since WoW's quest lines shifted the MMO focus into 'do whatever the guy with the exclamation mark says'.  UO had lots of story, all created by the players.  EVE has similar story, a history, in fact.  Asheron's Call, I am sad to say, I never did more than dabble in, but from things I've heard over the years, they changed the world based on player actions.  The live team actually took into account what people did and altered the world to match, and different servers had different histories, from my understanding.  That's the kind of thing that you cannot get in any other medium.  That's the kind of story that MMO's need to focus on.

I was hoping SWTOR's story system would be interesting and manage to combine story and multiplayer in a cool and effective manner.  It really didn't, sadly.  It also didn't take advantage of having thousands online - it could just as easily be a 4-player co-op game, and would probably be far better in that manner.  And I bet they could have made it as a 4-player co-op for far, far less money, sold more copies, and overall made a bigger profit doing it that way.  Because there's nothing I can think of in the entire game that requires thousands online simultaneously, or that requires a persistent world, or that takes advantage of anything unique that the MMO platform has to offer.  Even the warfronts could be set up through Origin or something.

[Simond]

Cursed Forests do not have unicorns. I will believe this until I die.

What about the Lesser Faydark?

[Sjofn]

Cursed Forests do not have unicorns.

[Venkman]

I would say it's pretty hard to have a "rich world" with no adequate story whatsoever. DAoC is the only one I can really think of off the top of my head, and they got away with it because they set it in a place where the "lore" was pretty much already known by basically everyone. It's also part of why, I suspect, Albion was the Fat Realm on so many servers. We generally "know" Albion better than Midgard, and definitely better than Hibernia. :P

A Star Wars game might get away with it in the same way for the same reasons, of course. But that's not what they decided to do. And personally, I am glad, because that would not have interested me at all. 

DAoC had about as much to do with the Camelot we all know about as SWTOR had to do with the Star Wars we all know about. They used the set pieces but ignored absolutely everything else. SWTOR wanted you to care about the story, which is a good idea insofar as at least it's different from whack a mole. But it had a higher barrier because the setting itself was KOTOR, though they did take great pains to ensure everything *looked* as close to the movies as possible.

Also, DAoC gets almost all of its pass because it was the first MMO to launch that was playable on launch day at a time when the whole world didn't even know what an MMORPG was, and those that did were reading a certain unmentinable's charts for EQ1s latest numbers.It was laughably incomplete at launch, the Albion advantage was mostly because Hibernian had almost no content and Midgard not yet balanced. But this was fine because everyone in the genre then flocked to it simply because it was not EQ, AC nor UO, AO was still laughingstock and L1 and D2 were still being categorized as "not for us" or "not MMO" respectively.

In other words, that game shouldn't be used as reference for anything built in the last nine years.

[trias_e]

It's a good thing he labeled that a rant, because that article seems to boil down to "MMOs don't tell stories as well as single-player RPGs, so they shouldn't even try."

I actually agree with this.  If I want story, I'll play a single player RPG.  In an MMO, I want the players to create the story with the tools provided them in game.  Instead of wasting resources on story, voice acting, and cutscenes, just give me more content, solid combat, and a rich world.  

Sadly, none of this will never happen as today's mainstream gamers want their experience in rails.    GW2 is doing a decent job of bridging the gap... but still feels a bit too much on rails in places. 

This boils down to the fact that MMOs are not generally made with any purpose these days.  Every game I play I ask myself 'why was this game made to be massively multiplayer', and I constantly can not come up with any idea based on the gameplay. 

Why make this game a MMO?  Was there some compelling reason that this particular game, mechanics, gameplay and all needed to be massively multiplayer?   Oh yeah, they needed to make money.  But not because it makes sense from a gameplay perspective. As a massive fanboy from the TSW beta I will just say that story-wise it is TOR done right, but I am still pissed it is a MMORPG.  It shouldn't be.  It should be Vampire: Bloodlines, part deux, with awesome Tornquist writing.  But instead they cock it up by making it an MMO.  I'll still buy it, but I am not pleased.  Just I was not pleased with TOR being an MMORPG.  It was utterly purposeless from a game development perspective except as a moneygrab.  The only difference between TOR and TSW is I actually like the writing and story in TSW.

[Sjofn]

It was laughably incomplete at launch, the Albion advantage was mostly because Hibernian had almost no content and Midgard not yet balanced.

That may have been true for some people, but by and large if you ask someone if they'd rather play an arthurian wizard versus something called a "spiritmaster," the wizard is going to win. People know what a wizard or minstrel or paladin are. They're iffier on a runemaster or skald or thane.

[Simond]

Troll thanes were awesome. "Look at me! I'm The Thing-Thor!" 

[AcidCat]

I actually agree with this.  If I want story, I'll play a single player RPG.  In an MMO, I want the players to create the story with the tools provided them in game.  Instead of wasting resources on story, voice acting, and cutscenes, just give me more content, solid combat, and a rich world.  

This. This. This. A million times this.

[Reg]

Go play Eve.

[Nebu]

Go play Eve.

Eve?  No. 

I want DAoC 2, thank you very much.

[Kageru]

Story is great, it adds flavor to the gameplay... but the error SWTOR made was thinking watching a cinematic is gameplay. Doubly so when the multi-player balance and demands for content duration mean they can't have deeply branching story paths, powers varying too much or companions dying. And indeed that most of the story scenes will branch into extremely generic MMO gameplay invalidating the cinematics.

Or put another way there is a huge gap between Eve (supplied story is some lore hidden away somewhere) and SWTOR (excessive money wasted on story elements). GW2's option of character models running standard emotes while a bit of text is read out (and lore dumps on the web) is fine, WoW's modern model of NPC's acting out the story is excellent but expensive so not even they can base the game on it, SWTOR spent way too much money and effort on story telling that wasn't supported by game-play and have pretty much proven that it has a poor return in terms of long term retention.

[Margalis]

There is a huge opportunity in MMOs to have ambient story through environments and such. Through cutscenes not so much.

[Ingmar]

Story is great, it adds flavor to the gameplay... but the error SWTOR made was thinking watching a cinematic is gameplay.

There are hardly any 'cinematics' in SWTOR. There are lots of Bioware-style dialogue scenes, where the player is a participant.

EDIT: Contrast this to something like Uldum in WoW, which is full of actual, non-participatory cinematics.

[Nevermore]

That's the biggest problem (besides the terrible voice acting) I have with the GW2 story elements.  Their 'personal story' cutscenes are non-participatory cinematics instead of interactive dialogs.  You wouldn't think the Bioware version with multiple choices all leading to the same result would be all that different, but it really does give a much better illusion that you're making choices for your character instead of just watching a pre-determined story.

[Ingmar]

And they don't all actually lead to the same result, for that matter. I've noticed a lot of spots on playthroughs subsequent where different choices do have at least minor effects on things - different objectives on missions from certain choices, extra fights from others, etc. Most often from making different dark/light side choices.

[Kageru]

Story is great, it adds flavor to the gameplay... but the error SWTOR made was thinking watching a cinematic is gameplay.

There are hardly any 'cinematics' in SWTOR. There are lots of Bioware-style dialogue scenes, where the player is a participant.

EDIT: Contrast this to something like Uldum in WoW, which is full of actual, non-participatory cinematics.

Funny, the youtube videos I watched had long scenes of models talking through and animating a scene which went on for quite a while. That's a cinematic approach to story telling done through the game engine. The fact you get to make a choice at certain points doesn't make it less a cinematic.

[Sjofn]

I disagree.