Schilling's Green Monster Games

[Musashi]

You can't compare quest text to, uh, well, really any other text medium, I suppose.

Quest text is almost all monologue, dotted with some rare occurances of dialogue or live action (scripting.)

In short it's bad writing and castigating people for not paying attention to it is castigating people for displaying taste. The Evil Troll Jabbar broke into Queen Esmerelda's bedroom and stole her magic tiara, it's up to you, a totally random stranger, to get it back.

It'd still be a bad narrative, not matter how it was delivered. You could have Robert DeNiro giving that quest in an fully interactive in-game environment and it would still be bad.

Fully voiced dialogue helps, but at the end of the day there are only about 10 different quest types - it is how they are presented that counts.

All kidding aside.  I don't really care about the quality of the narrative.  I care about whether the quality of the reward is worth suffering through the narrative.  All I'm saying is if you want to have lore and written context in your game, fine, just don't shoehorn it into quests, or otherwise force feed me poorly written shit.  Just make it easy for me to find something to do and let the world and the players in it provide the context.  I think you gain more immersion for most people by leaving even well written lore out.

[tmp]

I think you gain more immersion for most people by leaving even well written lore out.

Why do you think so?

It is difference between being in situation where something happens and you don't know why, or somethng happens and it's because of X. How do you reason lack of information about your surroundings makes these surroundings more immersive?

[UnSub]

If you have to read a book's worth of text to get to the lore, I agree, it's been done badly.

Ultimately MMOs have to let the players 'live' the lore and I agree that walls of text don't do that (voice is better, but even half the time it's mostly fluff). The issue isn't necessarily that you have to kill 10 rats, but that the quest giver just stands there and does nothing while the world remains static. There's no sense of urgency to do anything. No consequences (or not) for acting in a timely manner.

Single player RPGs are better at giving that experience because they can make the player jump through different hoops and show consequences because the entire game centres around them. MMOs have to be open enough for everyone to do the same missions, sometimes on a team. I'm not sure there is a way around that without (as SWOR is doing) literally forcing players to make a choice they can't change and letting a team vote on key decisions or making everything run in a linear fashion.

[Rendakor]

Even without implementing choice, the phasing WoW uses in some of WotLK does a very good job of making the player's actions feel meaningful. The introductory Argent Crusade quests in Icecrown are a very good example of this. Of course, that causes an entire new set of problems centered around player grouping...

[Venkman]

The player grouping thing is temporary though. It does feel more immersive. It's a good first step. But the lack of choice just makes it feel like an outdoor instance before it respawns the bosses. Just without the respawn.

I find it interesting, that when I think back to "stories" involving MMoGs, what comes to mind is stories that sprang up in the early games like UO and AC1 Darktide. The stories I think of all relate to player based actions and interactions, because these games had little to no quests at all. I mean there were a few NPCs or books here and there that gave out goals, but most of the real stories came up through player interaction, and dare I say it, pvp/pk'ing.

This has been the case in all MMOs. Ever. Players have always been the story. But the more popular a game, the more likely players expect the "story" to be whatever the developer told them to create. It's typical consumption attitude: entertainment that washes over a player while they go through the motions. Very similar to TV and radio except there's button mashing.

This conversely is also why most people don't care about the story. They may say they want to, but then they'll got watch some forgettable episodic TV show and not really care there either. These people want mindless story, except when they have a channel to complain about something.

Story can only matter in these games when choices matter in these games which, yes, means one-time choices per character. Right now the diku-inspired games are merely character optimization engines. But ironically, each character already makes those one-time choices. It's just that nothing about the world itself changes as a result.

If (big IF) SWTOR addresses that, it'll do so to the same Nth degree that keeps WoW in its unique position of success. As in, if you can only solve it by throwing infinite cash at it, only one company per half decade can do it.

[Musashi]

I think you gain more immersion for most people by leaving even well written lore out.

Why do you think so?

It is difference between being in situation where something happens and you don't know why, or somethng happens and it's because of X. How do you reason lack of information about your surroundings makes these surroundings more immersive?

Because nobody with any sense gives two shits about where Ragnaros comes from.  They know he comes from fire because look, he's all firey.  He's in a zone called Molten Core.  He's all big and stuff and he totally pwns a boss it took you months to figure out.  That's all context I don't have to read.  Point is there's more context in your vent, thottbot, and quest helper than an army of writers could ever hope to provide.

You better believe I read all about how to make that hammer though.

[Rendakor]

The player grouping thing is temporary though. It does feel more immersive. It's a good first step. But the lack of choice just makes it feel like an outdoor instance before it respawns the bosses. Just without the respawn.

The way it is now in WoW it's just a matter of 'catch up then we can group'. If you added player choice, you would run into grouping problems. I.e. if one player helped the Crusade and another joined the Scourge; at the end of their respective quest chains one player has a fully constructed Argent Crusade base in the area while the other has a desolate wasteland with some ziggurats and a slaughterhouse.

And the story would matter a WHOLE lot more without the bosses (or rats, or whatever) respawning. Quest text feels like it doesn't matter because it, well, doesn't. You're not doing this quest to have any impact on the world, just to move your XP bar a little or get some loot. Daily quests are probably the biggest offenders of this, because they make the futility so obvious. "Go kill some of those undead! Good job. Now be back here tomorrow at 9am sharp, to kill some more of them!" However, a larger portion of the playerbase seems to give a shit when the questlines are building up to some sort of event.

Compare, for WoW examples, the AQ gate opening with the Argent Tournament stuff. The AQ gate was, essentially, just a series of grindable money sinks; however, since turning bandages or whatever in has a measurable effect on the gameworld, a larger percentage of the players gave a fuck. Now we have the AT, which contains repeatable quests for a similar construction project. Unfortunately, this is in name only as the AT will be completed when Blizzard feels like it and thus these quests have no meaning. So they are only done for the item rewards, gold, etc.

tl;dr quests dont change the world so who cares about lorelol

[tmp]

Because nobody with any sense gives two shits about where Ragnaros comes from.  They know he comes from fire because look, he's all firey.  He's in a zone called Molten Core.  He's all big and stuff and he totally pwns a boss it took you months to figure out.  That's all context I don't have to read.

Cool. But how do you reason knowing less about your surroundings makes these surroundings more immersive, again?

(i'm not arguing if you can get by with just "ooh, fire guy, hits hard". Just curious how it's "more immersive" because immersion is about becoming part of virtual environment. When this environment is something you don't know two shits about, what exactly do you get immersed in?)

Point is there's more context in your vent, thottbot, and quest helper than an army of writers could ever hope to provide.

What context? The quest helper is an arrow to show you where to go and click on stuff, the vent is "MOAR DOTs" and thottbot is text which as we all know, is a chore and so no one gives a fuck.

That's not context, but handholding. It allows the player to proceed without knowing the context and a lot of players appreciate it, sure... but it's an entirely different animal.

[WindupAtheist]

The common response is that if the different solutions had different rewards, then everyone would just choose based on powergaming the best reward, and if the different solutions gave the same rewards then there would be no point.

Which is bullshit.

Just make the rewards for each solution clear ahead of time and let people do whatever they want. A bunch of them will powergame to one extent or another. That's fine, let them. You can't stop them, and making the entire game into Progress Quest because of them has frankly been done enough. The MMO community is sort of psychotic in that it'll scream "You can't give us any choices, we might choose the wrong things!" and then turn around and ask "Why don't these games give us more choices?!"

[Typhon]

The time for reading in-game is when doing someting that requires little interactivity.  Crafting comes to mind. 

So, give me a "tome of knowledge" that unlocks lore that I can read in two ways; 1) in game via the tome of knowledge 2) out of game through the game website via my online "tome of knowledge".

That way, in-game characters can use short sentences as queues to more fleshed out plot that players can choose to read during downtime or offline.

[Stephen Zepp]

The common response is that if the different solutions had different rewards, then everyone would just choose based on powergaming the best reward, and if the different solutions gave the same rewards then there would be no point.

Which is bullshit.

Just make the rewards for each solution clear ahead of time and let people do whatever they want. A bunch of them will powergame to one extent or another. That's fine, let them. You can't stop them, and making the entire game into Progress Quest because of them has frankly been done enough. The MMO community is sort of psychotic in that it'll scream "You can't give us any choices, we might choose the wrong things!" and then turn around and ask "Why don't these games give us more choices?!"

This. Let's not forget the first time a major MMO tried to inject world changing story into their world: EQ and the Sleeper's Tomb. Just about universally hated, but the developers said, "do this players, and the world changes, forever.". All that happened then were basically complaints of "but some other person did something, and now I can't enjoy the game I paid for!!!".

To solve that issue, you have to change the fundamental design of the game itself, top down. Every item or reward is unique. Content is generated procedurally, or by players. Everything anyone does is world changing, period....kill that quest mob, it doesn't come back.

[UnsGub]

To solve that issue, you have to change the fundamental design of the game itself, top down. Every item or reward is unique. Content is generated procedurally, or by players. Everything anyone does is world changing, period....kill that quest mob, it doesn't come back.

That is one way but nobody seems to have done it half way yet.  Just take the four seasons, just weather and animal migrations, of a year and cycle the game world on that, year after year.  The other obvious yearly cycles comes from sports, baseball is a good example. with a season per year.  Content, stories, history are made ever as well as reset.  A baseball field is a pretty basic environment and look at the drama, content, and history it provides.  Make the right environment, drop two or more people into it, have people on the court and in the stands, and the stories just make themselves.

[Musashi]

Because nobody with any sense gives two shits about where Ragnaros comes from.  They know he comes from fire because look, he's all firey.  He's in a zone called Molten Core.  He's all big and stuff and he totally pwns a boss it took you months to figure out.  That's all context I don't have to read.

Cool. But how do you reason knowing less about your surroundings makes these surroundings more immersive, again?

(i'm not arguing if you can get by with just "ooh, fire guy, hits hard". Just curious how it's "more immersive" because immersion is about becoming part of virtual environment. When this environment is something you don't know two shits about, what exactly do you get immersed in?)

Because immersion in the world has zero relation to how much quest text you read.  I am not an idiot.  I know that if there's a monster, I'm going to have to fight.  You don't need to know everything about the monster's motivation for fighting you.  It's implied by the simple fact that he's a god damn monster.

We probably define immersion differently.  I'm saying that immersion for me is in the interaction with other people and that the world sometimes gets in the way of that.  Specifically quests with lengthy text that obfuscate their goals.

Point is there's more context in your vent, thottbot, and quest helper than an army of writers could ever hope to provide.

What context? The quest helper is an arrow to show you where to go and click on stuff, the vent is "MOAR DOTs" and thottbot is text which as we all know, is a chore and so no one gives a fuck.

That's not context, but handholding. It allows the player to proceed without knowing the context and a lot of players appreciate it, sure... but it's an entirely different animal.

You're missing the point.  It's not hand holding.  All those things are tools for players to cut through the bullshit that presents itself as context to get down to the actual context.  That is the context that the players make themselves.

[Stormwaltz]

Just about universally hated, but the developers said, "do this players, and the world changes, forever.". All that happened then were basically complaints of "but some other person did something, and now I can't enjoy the game I paid for!!!".

To solve that issue, you have to change the fundamental design of the game itself, top down. Every item or reward is unique. Content is generated procedurally, or by players.

Bollocks.

Place this sort of thing in an instance. The first time someone - anyone - finishes the instance, they get to make the world-altering decision. Making the decision is the reward. Aside from that, all the group gets is a unique title that identifies them as, um, "the deciders." After the first completion and decision, remove the choice mechanic and replace it with a set of material rewards (swords, gold, whatever). Otherwise, don't change the content.

It's the responsibility of the designers to ensure that both options are different but perceived-equal net positives (add this monster to the world, or that one -- never remove a monster).

[Venkman]

To solve that issue, you have to change the fundamental design of the game itself, top down. Every item or reward is unique. Content is generated procedurally, or by players. Everything anyone does is world changing, period....kill that quest mob, it doesn't come back.

Exactly. This comes up about yearly around here and it always ends in the same spot: as long as MMOs continued to be designed as one-way linear games of players proceeding through levels to unlock abilities by engaging pre-canned content, this situation will never change. Players of these games will cry for more meaning but won't want it when they actually get it, because all that does is inhibit their ability to continue the train ride through acquiring new abilities.

The only way to solve the problem is to change the motivation of play from achievement to enlightenment. Or, ya know, an actual RPG. The rest of it becomes smaller problems to solve, individual cases somewhat managed. To start, we need:

• Choice that matters to your further game play
• Choice that makes sense
• Choice that impacts your abilities
• Choices that can be corrected through other choices so you're not permanently gimped

Suppose in a Fallout MMO you've got one person who blew up Megaton and another person who didn't. That's an endgame choice (in an MMO, not in the RPG) that permanently brackets those players from certain areas of the game (Qeynos/Freeport) but doesn't mean they can't ever play together again (endgame raids). And the fact that it happens at the endgame means players don't just niavely show up together as friends and make completely separate choices "by accident". And I mentioned Qeynos/Freeport because EQ1 did have this already: you could through work change your mind.

Not everyone will go for this. And unfortunately, doing a game this way could be so prohibitively expensive it never occurs because the market isn't big enough for it. So in the meantime we'll have the current successes make single-player story engines that culminate in raid/RvR encounters that have no story at all, or RPGs [/list]

[tmp]

You're missing the point.  It's not hand holding.  All those things are tools for players to cut through the bullshit that presents itself as context to get down to the actual context.  That is the context that the players make themselves.

I think we might be defining context differently, too. For me, it's knowing the motivations of characters involved in situations, that lead to said situation playing out in this way and not some other. For you --if i'm reading it right-- the context is, if it's attackable then it's a god damn monster and so you're going to fight it because it is a monster, and knowing anything beyond is not only unnecessary but getting in a way?

[Musashi]

Not really.  I'm simplifying for the purpose of getting the point across without a wall of text.  The kind of context you're talking about is wholly unnecessary for me.  In fact I don't really consider it context at all.  It's universally terrible, and 90% of it doesn't have any information that's pertinent other than vague directions and hints.  To me the monster's context in an mmo is contained in what he looks like, what he sounds like, where he is, what I have to do to get to him, and what he does when I get there.  Anything else is superfluous crap held over from our fondness for Zork.

[Stephen Zepp]

Just about universally hated, but the developers said, "do this players, and the world changes, forever.". All that happened then were basically complaints of "but some other person did something, and now I can't enjoy the game I paid for!!!".

To solve that issue, you have to change the fundamental design of the game itself, top down. Every item or reward is unique. Content is generated procedurally, or by players.

Bollocks.

Place this sort of thing in an instance. The first time someone - anyone - finishes the instance, they get to make the world-altering decision. Making the decision is the reward. Aside from that, all the group gets is a unique title that identifies them as, um, "the deciders." After the first completion and decision, remove the choice mechanic and replace it with a set of material rewards (swords, gold, whatever). Otherwise, don't change the content.

It's the responsibility of the designers to ensure that both options are different but perceived-equal net positives (add this monster to the world, or that one -- never remove a monster).

Note that I'm taking a devil's advocate position for purposes of debate--I don't necessarily disagree with you.

How is that different from what happened with Waking the Sleeper? The net result of waking kerafym the first time:

--one time world event sequence occurs (K escapes from the tomb, rampages server zones killing everyone, eventually goes away.
--Sleeper's Tomb loses the 4 warders as killables, and loses K. himself, replaces with other loot generating bosses.
----note that the tradeout of lootables was significantly different for certain classes (Monk, Rogue if I remember correctly were the only ones that were truly game affecting--regen robe for Monks, some cool stabber for rogues), but otherwise it was exactly as you described.

The key nerdrage arugments made about the world changing event once it was revealed:

--"but I wanted to waken the sleeper, and I paid for it!"

--"I'm a monk/rogue, and someone else removed items from the game I wanted!"

--"My guild got cockblocked by another guild, we were this close to waking the sleeper!" (similar to the first above, but not quite)

Using your argument, the only thing that was done poorly was the second argument (equal value replacement loot), but that's simply a loot table decision, not a world changing event decision.

[Musashi]

Using your argument, the only thing that was done poorly was the second argument (equal value replacement loot), but that's simply a loot table decision, not a world changing event decision.

It doesn't matter if the world changes one way or the other as long as the loot is the same.  You don't pay to get Thunderfury when you open the game box.  You pay to play in a world where getting Thunderfury is possible.  EQ era cockblocking is a thing of the past.  But admit it.  You miss the ogres.

[Stephen Zepp]

The point I'm trying to make here is that the concept of "world changing" and "instancing" are at cross-purposes. Either you can change the world (and therefore the content that is provided to the world), or you can't. There isn't a "middle ground".

I think a better example would be Shadowbane -- players don't scream at the devs, "But I wanted to be part of the Ebonlore Capital City Siege--I paid for it, and it's not fair others got to do it and I didn't!". Since the game of SB was built around the siege experience (in part at least), it was silently understood that sieges weren't content you paid for and had a right to participate in, and I don't think you can accomplish the same user understanding with statically generated content.

[tmp]

Not really.  I'm simplifying for the purpose of getting the point across without a wall of text.  The kind of context you're talking about is wholly unnecessary for me.  In fact I don't really consider it context at all.  It's universally terrible, and 90% of it doesn't have any information that's pertinent other than vague directions and hints.  To me the monster's context in an mmo is contained in what he looks like, what he sounds like, where he is, what I have to do to get to him, and what he does when I get there.  Anything else is superfluous crap held over from our fondness for Zork.

Hmm; so basically it should be a "show, don't tell, i don't want one word from you motherfuckers" approach?

Can see the appeal just feels it could be done the easiest through remake of Golden Axe or similar side-scroller, maybe turned 3d. Not that there'd be anything wrong with that. demon's souls?

[Tannhauser]

Steven gave me an idea.  You could have a frontier world,  say the players are from a crashed spaceship and they must kill the native mobs and build a small settlement.  Then you go out from there, killing and clearing land and uncovering the mysteries of the planet until you hit the level cap and end the story. 

[Venkman]

The moving Front Lines from Tabula Rasa was theoretically someday maybe going to mimic that sorta thing.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the concept of "world changing" and "instancing" are at cross-purposes. Either you can change the world (and therefore the content that is provided to the world), or you can't. There isn't a "middle ground".

Yes and no. And maybe. To complete the waffling

Mythica had a good start on this idea before Microsoft nixed the project. The idea was basically as Stormwaltz had it: instance that shit. The difference was more like how EQ2 did it though: the instance is different depending on the player in there. Mythica added permanent world-changing terrain deformation and Havok physics for explosive destructive goodness.

The problem is the cost of building. Games are still built as linear experiences. So you enter a zone, you do something, that zone is forever changed. I don't need to tell you how that gets built But to change it again, you need to build in the triggers, the rules, and the result. So now it's a simple content question: how many zones have how many states based on how many triggers, compared against how many people you expect to show up to change the zone how many times. In current development practice, this can get geometrically more expensive with each iteration a zone can take.

So in that, there is no difference between world-changing and instancing: neither is feasible outside of the $100mil+ mega project. That is until someone cracks the code of procedurally generated content that is linked to procedurally generated quests that don't smell of that special brand of generic which was the SWG Mission Terminal, the UO Posts and the AO missions.

I'd still like to see a whole-hearted stab at a choose your own adventure within a shared persistent space with instancing of major events.

[Senses]

I'm not 100pct sure where I'm going with this, but its been running through my mind throughout this discussion of game changing events and how it affects those that get the option to change the world and those who miss out only to arrive later and wonder why they dont get a part in it all.  While playing WoW, in what I would consider a pretty good guild, most of the time, I really felt like we were in a world of our own.  That is to say, it was "our" black temple we were clearing and "our" bosses that were dropping loot, so much so that the only times I personally mingled with the rest of the server was in town showing off new equipment or passing them by while gathering herbs.  This was wholly satisfying to me at least, and it occurs to me that why can't whole worlds be simply Guild Based?

A new guild could in essence own its own world and while you of course exist on the same server as many other guilds and see them in town, you make and change the world your guild lives in.  If a guild dies, the world ends, and the guild members go off to join other worlds, whatever...but as long the guild survives, the world is forever linked to them.  Essentially, not everyone is a hero, but every small community has a chance to create and remember their own heros.  I realize to some extent, it is this way already, with events unlocking new content, but why not bring it a level further and let guild's really choose how they want their world to shape up.  Do they choose the one route that might make certain towns hate them, or certain vendors not trade with them, or do they choose the other that opens up new professions for the entire guild.

[Bzalthek]

At some point players need to get educated out of the entitlement mindset.  I'm very much a casual friendly kind of guy, but I don't hold to the "I paid for the game, so I deserve to get everything in the game" mentality, though I am against the "railroad to raider" mentality.  That being said, at some point developers are going to have to let their players know that sometimes shit goes away.  Sometimes there's an event that only happens once.  You planned on taking out Sleeper, but you were too late?  Isn't that your problem for dawdling?  People are always going to complain, that's what people do.  On the box, right under "Game experience may change during online play." put "Sometimes shit goes away." and tell them to suck it up.

[Stormwaltz]

SirBruce'd to answer your specific points.

--one time world event sequence occurs (K escapes from the tomb, rampages server zones killing everyone, eventually goes away.

The change is not a one-time "if you're offline you miss it" thing. It's a permanent change.

--Sleeper's Tomb loses the 4 warders as killables, and loses K. himself, replaces with other loot generating bosses.

Don't change the bosses. Only the reward, from choice/title to equipment/xp. If those who chose want the gear, they can repeat the instance later.

--"but I wanted to waken the sleeper, and I paid for it!"

Not sure what you mean by "paid for it." For the expansion pack? I cut my teeth on the Asheron's Call live team, where our "expansion packs" were called "monthly content updates." You don't advance the plot once a year and charge everyone $50 for a chance at it. You change it 4-12 times a year, and the sub covers it. My opinion is that expansion packs are for adding big new landscape chunks and new/expanded features. In fact, my bias is that expansion packs are the only way to economically add features.

--"I'm a monk/rogue, and someone else removed items from the game I wanted!"

To me, this sounds like another excellent reason to make the "first time" rewards non-material, and to be careful that each choice option adds to the world rather than removes.

I've always felt that there's a difference between those who'd pursue the explorer/socializer reward of the choice and title and those who'd pursue the achiever/killer reward of loot. But again I'm biased by my memories of AC -- the guys on the PVP server had a running joke that they'd "wait for the carebears to figure out this month's quest," and they'd do it later, if the rewards were good enough.

"My guild got cockblocked by another guild, we were this close to waking the sleeper!" (similar to the first above, but not quite)

This is why I've come to love per-group instancing, and dearly wish we'd had it on AC1. Any competition is an abstract race against other groups playing through the quest in parallel to yours. They can't actually interfere with you.

In AC, we also learned to not start with the quest active right when the patch went live. We'd pre-program the start times to stage a week or two after the patch, or have GMs enter the servers and enter a single startevent command at (apparently) random times.

[Typhon]

be careful that each choice option adds to the world rather than removes.

I think this single point would remove most of the objection that most people have to world-changing events - people don't piss and moan about someone being "first", they piss and moan about someone being "only".

Is this example what you're getting at? - there exists a wall in the game that is not passable, but stuff clearly exists on the other side (a zone, for instance).  Under the wall is a dungeon.  First ten groups to kill the final boss in that dungeon get a "chunk of the wall" (only useful as a trophy).  After the wall is down everyone can get through and the dungeon can still be run, but no one groups get a chunk.

If so, I'd add - if you are going to do something like this, do it frequently.  When you do something like this very rarely, you make the "chunk of the wall" stuff more desirable and that'll chaff some ass.  Also, since you are blocking off content, I would that that you wouldn't want to make the dungeon mcuh more difficult then a "normal" dungeon.  Make it a race to get there and get it done rather then some insurmountable obstacle.

[chargerrich]

Voice acting can't replace text for quests and back story entirely because doing so would effectively block hearing impaired or deaf people from playing the game.  A small segment of the gaming population I'm sure but one that can (at least in the US) become party to a pretty nasty lawsuit based on the ADA.

Speaking of voice acting, does anyone else think that the "quest voice" for AC2 (RIP) and the intros to WoW sounds an awful lot like Avery Brooks (Deep Space Nine or "Hawk" from Spencer for Hire if you are old like me)?

 

[UnsGub]

The problem is the cost of building. Games are still built as linear experiences. So you enter a zone, you do something, that zone is forever changed.

Are you saying changed once or can be changed many times?  Volcano makes an island, players change it, earthquake sinks it.  Repeat seasonally.

If a game is designed with changing the world from the start, ie map, texture, models changing, each patch as well as new one (already solved) it is possible to make the world change functionally and visually.

[Bzalthek]

be careful that each choice option adds to the world rather than removes.

I think this single point would remove most of the objection that most people have to world-changing events - people don't piss and moan about someone being "first",

Yes they do. 

[tmp]

Indeed, there's precious little in MMOs people don't piss and moan about

[Tige]

At some point players need to get educated out of the entitlement mindset. 

Good luck with that.

Would you want to be the developer/publisher putting up the money to start the "re-education" of players when there is a gazillion other mmo's offering status quo?  Change in this genre will have to come from a small company with nothing left to lose or a huge company with nothing better to do.  In the meantime we get variations of theme. 

EQ2 did the voice thing and FFXI did skillchain.  Everyone after that is doing the same thing.  Different recipe, same dish.

[Bzalthek]

Yep, it won't be easy, but eventually people will realize that "short term bad long term good" is better than "short term good long term bad."

[Typhon]

That's certainly true in the business world, people never screw their company over to artificially inflate the value of their options.  And shareholders are pleased when companies forego short-sighted profit seeking for R&D that promised long term gain.

[Tarami]

That took longer than I expected.