Bioware Austin.. damm more Dragons.. or Lightsabers?

[Morat20]

Not so. Fallout I loved, and many others (BaK is high up there), Baldur's gate had a crappy system that felt like D&D - boring rolls and unspried gameplay, and KOTOR was.. I dunno it was just boring. Mechanics were dull, world was insipid.. I didn't get far in.

Baldur's Gate used the D&D 2.0 system. It was D&D. And it used the Forgotten Realms D&D system. But frankly, I played for Minsc and Boo.

As for Wing Commander -- I remember (way back in the day) playing WC2 at the same time a friend was, and him being shocked that I took Kithrik Mong (or whatever the hell that station was called) and he got stuck battling a fleet.

[Raph]

El Gallo, I know we've had plenty of throwdowns before, but I really just have to ask... from what you write, it really honestly sounds like you believe WoW is the be-all end-all One True Way, and that there are no further developments to be had in MMOs, and that everything prior was a total failure, and that everyone in the industry prior was a talentless hack.

Seriously?

[WayAbvPar]

Yes polish is rewarded but the game actually has to be, you know, fun as well. Otherwise we'd all be talking about FF XI not WoW, and that game also blows away the "omigod must spend 100 million dollars to create a polished MMORPG" FUD/meme that's been spreading around.

FFXI was neither low budget nor particularly polished (the PC version was a direct port of the console version).

Anyone who suggests, greenlights, or in any way participates in a direct console to PC port deserves to die from sort of hemorrhagic venereal disease.

[Slyfeind]

Right now, there's a strict linearity to MMOGs that Relic could innovate against. This isn't about lore. This is about pure accountability within the game world. Forget KOTOR. Think Ultima IV and the 'Air of <whatever>' that would permit or prevent access to various places. Like Air of Thievery prevented access to Skara Brae, but they loved you in Bucc's Den.

What the hell Ultima are you talking about there?  :-D

Actually in UVL, we used that very thing you're talking about. There's a good path, and an evil path; and very little was done to accomodate either. We just designed the world, and scripted maybe six encounters along the way that defined who you were. There was a beginning and an ending, but the middle was up to the player to invent. That middle part shaped how the player saw the ending.

I think when people try to design two branching paths, they think they have to come up with two sets of cinematic sequences, two different game maps, two sets of dialog, etc etc. That's certainly one approach to it, but then you're wasting resources, as Gallo points out. A more economic approach is to build the world, give the world a purpose, then let the player explore the world.

I could swear I've heard that somewhere before....

[Trippy]

Yes polish is rewarded but the game actually has to be, you know, fun as well. Otherwise we'd all be talking about FF XI not WoW, and that game also blows away the "omigod must spend 100 million dollars to create a polished MMORPG" FUD/meme that's been spreading around.

FFXI was neither low budget nor particularly polished (the PC version was a direct port of the console version).

Anyone who suggests, greenlights, or in any way participates in a direct console to PC port deserves to die from sort of hemorrhagic venereal disease.

Like BioWare?

[WayAbvPar]

Yes polish is rewarded but the game actually has to be, you know, fun as well. Otherwise we'd all be talking about FF XI not WoW, and that game also blows away the "omigod must spend 100 million dollars to create a polished MMORPG" FUD/meme that's been spreading around.

FFXI was neither low budget nor particularly polished (the PC version was a direct port of the console version).

Anyone who suggests, greenlights, or in any way participates in a direct console to PC port deserves to die from sort of hemorrhagic venereal disease.

Like BioWare?

If the virus fits...

[Nebu]

If the virus fits...

You must acquit?

[Venkman]

What the hell Ultima are you talking about there?  :-D

Actually in UVL, we used that very thing you're talking about. There's a good path, and an evil path; and very little was done to accomodate either. We just designed the world, and scripted maybe six encounters along the way that defined who you were. There was a beginning and an ending, but the middle was up to the player to invent. That middle part shaped how the player saw the ending.

I think when people try to design two branching paths, they think they have to come up with two sets of cinematic sequences, two different game maps, two sets of dialog, etc etc. That's certainly one approach to it, but then you're wasting resources, as Gallo points out. A more economic approach is to build the world, give the world a purpose, then let the player explore the world.

It was Ultima IV with the Air of <Whatever> wasn't it? Because of the whole "Knights of Avatar" thing right? Or was that actually Ultima V (and by extension the Lazarus project you were on)?

Anywho, when I think of branching paths, as mentioned, I don't think of a robust network of content wherein each player might ever only see 25% of it (as they have made choices along the way to therefore not see the other 75%). That's a waste of resources. I want an open virtual world with game within but where choice matters. To make choice matter, one must be given real options, maybe through narrative, but it doesn't need to be. I'm not asking people to read books of text in the game. I'm actually just saying one should be able to choose sides, whatever and however many there are, and be compelled to do so by the game system.

EQ1 had some of that. Older games had more of it. Newer games have almost none. Your choice is to play or not, so really, not a choice.

I'm sure some folks might think that choice and accountability were reduced to cast a wider net on the mass market. But I'd counter that this removal happened before these games had a chance at mass market appeal. Back in the 90s, people would barely consider an online game, much less an MMO, due to the dialup crap. So design theories were tested and tossed based on the limited set of envelope-pushing dedicated gamers that came here.

I say a lot of old options can be revisited again. There's both a LOT more players and a much broader array of them. If you measure by WoW, you're trapped in the same late-90s thinking that inspired diku, thus still ignoring the truly large amount of people who would come here. But the difference nowadays is that the barrier of entry to capturing those new people is so low, it's folly to ignore them.

Drop in a free-to-play browser-based front end and you've removed all barriers. Just make sure you actually compel them to a full purchase :)

[stray]

Looking forward to El Gallo's answer. I want to see a throwdown.

[Margalis]

What El Gallo said was a bit harsh but he has a point.

I have been complaining for years about MMORPG devs that still use MUD terminology. Nobody wants to play your damn MUD anymore! That is a refusal to move forward and embrace a new medium and experience.

Why does the interface to a lot of "graphical MUDs" suck? Maybe because MUDs don't even *have* interfaces.

I've said it a hundred times and I'll say it again: MMORPGs are to MUDs as movies are to radio. Someone who speaks about movies in purely radio terms is obviously far behind the times and shows a stubborn refusal to catch up. Sure, MMORPGs are similar to MUDs in a lot of way. But people stuck in the MUD mindset just don't get it. (TM) In my mind a great familiarty with MUDs is likely a negative at this point.

I don't want the guy that designs Wii Tennis to speak about everything in Pong terms. That kind of speech and thought is inherently limiting. If you think of MMORPGs as graphical MUDs that is what you are going to make - graphical MUDs. With the same problems MUDs have and a bunch of new problems that come with not recognizing the new territory you are in. (For example, implementing a feature in a MUD takes 3 hours vs 6 months in a MMORPG)

I don't particularly care for the game vs. world debate, but what I do know is that "MUD - but with graphics!" isn't going to cut it any more.

[Megrim]

We may have to ask Schild to open a "throwdown" forum of sorts. It'll be just like Fight Club, but with nerds.

re: Darniaq


Would it really be a waste of content though? We've all played MMOs where we have re-rolled a character for whatever reason; be it a new class to play, guild needs more of x, new server, etc... So if a player experiences a percentage of content available and is able to experience the rest by playing other classes/re-rolling, this adds replay value does it not?

[Venkman]

Yea, I consider it a waste, based on probability. Assuming a purely binary system of choices on a linear path, a player has a 100% chance of not seeing 50% of all content tied to those specific decision points. So it's actually in-efficient, development-wise, to let the player make too many choices, because the more choices you let them make, the more content they won't see.

Now, you argue that a player on their second or beyond time through may make a different choice. That makes sense. However, nobody would ever say they guarantee the player would completely yang this time when they yinged the first time. So that's still not 100% of the programmed content.

As a result, it's simply become more efficient to FORCE players to see all the content by doing two things:

• Making key decisions for them. Like, arbitrarily splitting them between factions and realms, and never providing a way for that one character to switch sides. Also, Class/Template/Archetype is another arbitrary pre-made choice.
• Limit what they can based on the choices they made, already pre-limited by the game.

By limiting the player during their first choice, these games have a chance at getting that player to make OTHER choices, thereby seeing other content so much money was spent to create. And driving retention.

That's the challenge with branching storylines. How do you maximize all the content you spend so much money making while integrating a system that lets players use their DECISIONS as part of their character growth, not just an XP ladder? One answer here is procedurally-generated content. The other is player-generated content. When either drives the success of a game to a level enjoyment by pre-canned linear diku-spinoffs, then I think they'll matter. For now, the whole world hinges their hopes on Spore.

And that experience is unproven on many levels, no matter the skill or cash driving it. I can easily see that becoming like SL: the most talked about game nobody actually plays.

[Margalis]

I disagree on some level.

Let's say I have one choice halfway through the game that totally changes everything. That's 50% more work for me. That's bad.

But if that makes the player play through again when they wouldn't have otherwise, that's good. Especially in a MMORPG where retention is key.

Now let's say instead of a huge choice at 50% through the game I have a rather small choice with 3 prongs in the last 95% of the game. That means I have maybe 10% more work to do. (Two extra prongs at 5% of total game) but if the player plays through 3 times that is 3 times the retention for 10% more work.

Alliance/Horde is a decent example of this. Having two sides is a lot of work, but probably not twice as much work. The classes are largely the same, all the items are the same, the basic mechanics are the same, etc. If this gets players to play twice as long it is a win.

The key is making the extra work for yourself small while still encouraging players to play through many times. That can be done with relatively small choices, at varying points, some of which are mutually exclusive. The holy grail here is that there are a whole bunch of different paths the player can take, where each path doesn't take much work to create.

At some point that becomes annoying, players won't replay the entire game just to play one half-hour quest they missed. So you have to be careful.

I would argue that class/race selection is already an example of this sort of thing. Creating a new class or race is not *that* expensive, and if it means your player will play 2 chars instead of 1 that is a big win.

So basically...cajole players into playing through many times for minor differences in content...

[Venkman]

Err, you just made my point for me. :)

Seriously, you've described in greater detail what I listed above: this is why it currently works.

The problem being discussed is Lore, or the lack of relevance thereof. It's because the game isn't about RPG. It's about XP. To me, these experiences are built not upon a game mechanic, but rather an acquisition engine wrapped with a gametic interface. Obviously it works, but think about who it works for. WoW is not a mass market game. It actually just proved (in my mind) that the psychographic of EQ1 was actually much bigger than people believed.

Players can have 1,000 "choices", but they all get right back to a game purely about acquiring stuff. So, in the drive for efficiency, Lore itself has been subjugated to mere flavor text. Nobody cares because nobody has to care because why you do something in the game has nothing to do with any of the story within. The decade of Warcraft lore may have attracted people to the MMO, but that just proves a compelling game-based IP can be wrapped around the same core engine. And that simply inspires derivation by other similarly-big relevant (or otherwise) IP holders.

With the barrier of entry raised so high by WoW, who ELSE can possibly add to this highly saturated space? While sure the same question was asked pre-WoW, most who were asking ignored the Far East market which, business model aside, is coming here (ref: MTV with Nexon, Codemasters, etc). And they're bringing games that themselves are pretty similar, because their microtrans business model is the absolute perfect fit for an acquisition engine. Big money, big successes, big quality requirements, what's a budding MMO dev to do?

Something new. They almost have no choice.

One way to do that is to integrate paying attention and therefore accountability within the PvE side of the game. That means instead of rewarding XP based on achieveing a goal set forth by a Journal, you actually change a more fluid mix of variables, like faction/rep, in a system with more interconnectivity. It's a bit of a virtual worldy concept, something cribbed from, say, Eve, where this sort of thing does happen. But blending that with a more-RPG-like story engine of real choices and lore-based accountability, you could end up with a game compelling for similar reasons to WoW without the base compulsion towards addictiveness.

Or, said another way, it becomes more of a game.

[ajax34i]

I still think that choices, though they look like they multiply the work, don't really.  If the choices are a feature that brings in significantly more players than you'd normally get with just the polish and the standard class/race/xp based system, I think the "extra" work is justified, especially since "choices" are as viable as races, levels, and factions when it comes to spreading out your player base across nodes so they're not all trying to zone into Jita.  A 100% linear story would be terrible for the Jita problem, btw, especially if Jita is a starting system on opening day. 

But anyway, I still look at it as "your player base divides itself over the spectrum of choices and thus experiences all your content".  I could say that Redridge is wasted content for WoW, nobody goes there before L10 or after L30, the zone is used for only a small portion of a player's play time.  All zones are.  All MMO games have "wasted content" like this, where only a small portion of the player base is visiting said content, so I don't see how it would be different with limiting access via "choices" rather than limiting by level range or faction.

-------------

Heh, a PvE version of EVE, where players can acquire gold by grinding the NPC's, and also the NPC's respond to various playerbase characteristics, such as they build cities and move in and expand their (NPC) empire if the players have cleared the wilderness of monsters.  Players could (indirectly) control what the NPC's do, if it's coded in on the NPC side that they respond to things the players do.  Not individuals, but player guilds/alliances.

[Venkman]

That's actually part of it. EQ1 is a huge game with I think now in excess of 400 individual zones. But not only have they totally mudflated old zones, they obsoleted the core game mechanics in them, by chasing players into newer expansion packs with newer rules specific to newer places. Their legacy content has depreciated to a point I wonder if they ever wonder about just closing up those places to save on the hosting and maintenance costs. That'll happen in WoW too. Even NOW Redridge is a wasteland. Imagine a year from now, with another expansion looming, yet another race, probably another class, all new 1-whatever content. EQ3.0.

Is that a good thing to do? Maybe it works. If you ammortize the dev costs for content, maybe it pays for itself handily and hosting/maintaining is irrelevant in aggregate. I don't know.

I do feel it could work better than it does. You can reuse old zones. Send level 60s into level 10 zones for mega boss fights in areas, and based on quest chains, that won't impact newbies. WoW probably not. They like keeping people in zone blocks. Maybe population management is less server intensive than compelling players to go everywhere all the time.

[lamaros]

Let's say I have one choice halfway through the game that totally changes everything. That's 50% more work for me. That's bad.

Actually it's 33% more work.

But if that makes the player play through again when they wouldn't have otherwise, that's good. Especially in a MMORPG where retention is key.

Now let's say instead of a huge choice at 50% through the game I have a rather small choice with 3 prongs in the last 95% of the game. That means I have maybe 10% more work to do. (Two extra prongs at 5% of total game) but if the player plays through 3 times that is 3 times the retention for 10% more work.

Alliance/Horde is a decent example of this. Having two sides is a lot of work, but probably not twice as much work. The classes are largely the same, all the items are the same, the basic mechanics are the same, etc. If this gets players to play twice as long it is a win.

Of course, monkeys that will play twice as long to see exactly the same thing with different colours are .. well. I have no desire to play another race just for the sake of it. I do have desire to play through a new class, but I have little desire to play through the same material. I would pay to get Premade 60s in WoW.

I don't know how many people are like me and how many are willing to replay through the same content over and over for 5% more new, but I expected it's a lot lower than you think.

The key is making the extra work for yourself small while still encouraging players to play through many times. That can be done with relatively small choices, at varying points, some of which are mutually exclusive. The holy grail here is that there are a whole bunch of different paths the player can take, where each path doesn't take much work to create.

At some point that becomes annoying, players won't replay the entire game just to play one half-hour quest they missed. So you have to be careful.

I think this point is much easier reached than you think. The replayability of different things in WoW, like different classes, different factions, actually comes with a LOT of new stuff. Whole new zones, new quests, new character animations, new class mechanics, etc. You really have to add a whole lot of content to make it new to people, and it's the newness that makes it repayable.

You might argue that you never have to design the game engine or certain fundamental issues to do with the game again, and thus you're saving time there, but most of these types of games spend HUGE amounts of time putting in content, so you're not saving as much as you think.

After a while the game mechanics will bore people too and they will move on regardless, but the threshold here is much higher.

I would argue that class/race selection is already an example of this sort of thing. Creating a new class or race is not *that* expensive, and if it means your player will play 2 chars instead of 1 that is a big win.

I disagree. I think making a new class would be a huge amount of work. That why you only see it in expansions. It's a whole lot more than putting in a new zone or a few more levels.

So basically...cajole players into playing through many times for minor differences in content...

Why? You got them there in the first place with a good game that took time to make. Given you are making money then there's no reason to just cut down and try reap profits. You'll still do well if you keep putting in the same effort for these people, so just do it.


Moving on.

WoW is a co-op RPG done large. Why to people keep playing? Because it's a good RPG. It's a well made game. It's social and persistent, so it retains people and they pay for it.

I don't see why you cant do CS: S as a game done large either. Why would people keep playing? Because it's a good FPS. It's a well made game. Make it social and persistent and it'll retain people who pay for it.

This issue gets so confused, but it's so very simple:

1: Make a solid polished game.
2: Make it FUN.
3: Make it social and persistent.
4: ??
5: Profit.

You might want to say that WoW is big because it did 3 well. That's true, but I don't think that's as hard to do as you might think. And they could sure it it a heap better(WoW would sure do it a heck of a lot better if they never had this stupid 'faction' system in the game.) If you do 1 and 2 with 3 in mind you should be able to tackle 3 quite well.

Lets use the example of GW. It did 1 well, I have to say. It fucked up some key areas of 2, especially in regard to the PvP game, but was still fun. It failed to do 3 well, especially the social aspect. It did a lot of things wrong but people would still say it was a bit of a success.

Bioware could make a good MMORPG. They could do it with great PvE content, they could do it with a great story, they could do it with great PvP. There are many ways to make your game fun and do it in a way different to WoW. There are many games out there that, redesigned for 3, and given some polish, would make good MMOGs.
I don't have faith in Bioware though, because I think they have no horse to pull the cart. You have to start with "we want to make a game that plays like this", then move on to "and we want to make it hugely multiplayer". You dont just think "lets make a MMORGP" and they try to decide what kind of game you want it to be afterwards.

That's actually part of it. EQ1 is a huge game with I think now in excess of 400 individual zones. But not only have they totally mudflated old zones, they obsoleted the core game mechanics in them, by chasing players into newer expansion packs with newer rules specific to newer places. Their legacy content has depreciated to a point I wonder if they ever wonder about just closing up those places to save on the hosting and maintenance costs. That'll happen in WoW too. Even NOW Redridge is a wasteland. Imagine a year from now, with another expansion looming, yet another race, probably another class, all new 1-whatever content. EQ3.0.

Is that a good thing to do? Maybe it works. If you ammortize the dev costs for content, maybe it pays for itself handily and hosting/maintaining is irrelevant in aggregate. I don't know.

I do feel it could work better than it does. You can reuse old zones. Send level 60s into level 10 zones for mega boss fights in areas, and based on quest chains, that won't impact newbies. WoW probably not. They like keeping people in zone blocks. Maybe population management is less server intensive than compelling players to go everywhere all the time.

This comes from taking a single player, progression based, game and making it into a MMO one. They are inherent problems, and while they can be managed through future content (WoWs use of BRD for coffer runs and such are one way to do it) it is not going to go away until devs step back and address it from conception. This is the area where WoW has failed the most in regard to the Online aspect, and one that will only be exacerbated with time.

[Trippy]

I do feel it could work better than it does. You can reuse old zones. Send level 60s into level 10 zones for mega boss fights in areas, and based on quest chains, that won't impact newbies. WoW probably not. They like keeping people in zone blocks. Maybe population management is less server intensive than compelling players to go everywhere all the time.

CoH does this (sending higher level players to lower level zones for missions) but then people complain about the travel times.

[lamaros]

Not playing CoH I don't know for sure. But I'm going to assume that stems from a problem with zone design that dictates the harder/higher level areas are progressively further and further away.

That's one of the inherent problems.

Once you reach a point where the zone demands are more balanced between the classes that use it then people will pipe down. Of course it just helps to design a more integrated world from the onset.

Oh, and you'd have problems with ganking and griefing and other such things if you do this in a PvP game too.

Inherent problems of a single player game translated to an online persistent one. No real solutions at that stage of the game.

You give people a path to follow, but you want to retain them. So you make the path long. When they get to the end of the path you say "it's not a path, it's a world" and you send them back to an earlier part of the path. But players are not stupid, they ask "why the fuck am I going back here? I've done this part of the path." And you say "it's not a path, it's a world." And they say "then why the fuck does it take so long to get from place to place?" "Because we only realised we needed a world once the path was already built."

[stray]

CoH is the one game where I don't mind travel time. Travel powers are great, and never really get old. It'd be nice if there were things you could do that made it a game in and of itself....Like THPS or something.

[edit] Actually, the Spidey games are a better comparison.

[Krakrok]

Uh, Guild Wars + Guild Wars Factions sold over two million copies. That puts it in the top 30 PC game sales of all time. I'm going with 'wildly successful' here.

[Megrim]

So far the biggest concern seems to be the idea of "wasted content". I think this is misplaced though, in that as a player, it does not bother me in the slightest how much extra work was done by the developers to create something. If i, as a player, advance a character through a particular and sufficiently unique path it is then of interest to me what else i can experience under different circumstances. This will not work for everyone, as some will no doubt make the same choices over and over again, then complaing about the lack of gameplay, but it serves no purpose in belittling the intelligence of the players and assuming that more than, say, 50% will not take a different path.

As far as mudflation; i don't think that the introduction of new content should automatically equate with the discarding of old. Maybe this is an artifact of a diku-level system, which would then indicate a problem with the actual game design rather than the "oh, that's boring!". A good example, the people who run the M:tG system constantly introduce new rules into what is (by gaming standards) a very old design. However, none of the rules introduced (at least to my knowledge, as i stopped playing around Urza's) have made or make old stuff unplayable or irrelevant.

A lot of this probably comes back to what Margalis said: we keep hearing all about this stuff from developers, who are supposedly now "enlightened", but with a few small exceptions we've yet to see anything actually being done.

[lamaros]

Uh, Guild Wars + Guild Wars Factions sold over two million copies. That puts it in the top 30 PC game sales of all time. I'm going with 'wildly successful' here.

Yes, a bit of a success (one likes to be understated). These numbers are agreeing with my point. Make a good game, make it polished. It will work. The world bits, the social and persistent online aspects are not that hard to do, to a satisfactory level - GWs did it shit and sold well, WoW has done it reasonably well and done awesomely. It's the *game* that makes the money, not the MMO.

Just make a damn fun game and make it well, the rest will follow.

[Slyfeind]

It was Ultima IV with the Air of <Whatever> wasn't it? Because of the whole "Knights of Avatar" thing right? Or was that actually Ultima V (and by extension the Lazarus project you were on)?

It was Ultima V, but your point still stands. The Air of Whatnot didn't make one city safe and another city more dangerous; it just made one city more dangerous. But making another city correspondingly more safe would have been cool nonetheless.

[Raph]

I have been complaining for years about MMORPG devs that still use MUD terminology. Nobody wants to play your damn MUD anymore! That is a refusal to move forward and embrace a new medium and experience.

The terms have hung on because they are mostly still applicable. Show me an MMORPG that doesn't make use of the familiar litany of zones, classes, aggro, tank, DPS, yadda yadda yadda, and maybe we can use some new terms. (And yes, I know they exist. And surprisingly, several of them come from MUD vets!).

I agree with you that people get stuck in old designs because it's all they have to reference. I even agree with you that the older guard is kind of inbred. I don't think you mean abandoning all the learning thus far, because that would be a bit silly.

I've said it a hundred times and I'll say it again: MMORPGs are to MUDs as movies are to radio. Someone who speaks about movies in purely radio terms is obviously far behind the times and shows a stubborn refusal to catch up.

The analogy I would use is very different. MUD are to MMORPGs as Lynx was to Mosaic. The server side has not changed very significantly for a variety of reasons (and not having solely to do with imagination).

I don't particularly care for the game vs. world debate, but what I do know is that "MUD - but with graphics!" isn't going to cut it any more.

And yet WoW is one of the most mudlike of all the MMO's?

[Margalis]

Raph, I both agree and disagree with what you are saying.

To me WOW represent a very thorough but shallow re-examination of MMORPGs. When I talk about polish I don't just talk about things like fewer glitches, I mean actual polish and sanding, which is iteratively smoothing out rough spots, shaving off sharp corners.

Why do quest givers in WoW have icons over their heads? Only because having to constantly run around town talking to everyone over and over again to get all the quests really sucks. So they removed the sucky parts. (The first time I made it to Windurst in FFXI I stopped playing for a month because the town was so large it depressed me, it took me an hour just to explore 1/5th of it)

They adhered very closely to the fundamental core of most MMORPGs and MUDs, but did not adhere closely to the outer layers. I would surmise this is because they are not wedded to those layers. They didn't help create those layers and they don't take them as givens.

That is the danger - taking things as givens. Why does crafting work the way it does? Why does getting a quest or using the UI work the way it does? Only because that's what we did before and it seemed to work ok...and nobody has come up with something better...

The graphical layer can not be an afterthought. The end user experience of getting quests, making items, drinking potions, moving around...that may not be any different on the server side but the server side is not the game.

"MUD with graphics" is not the same as "graphics based on a MUD." In WoW the end-user experience is what has been polished. Not so much the core mechanics and rules. But that is a valuable thing to do because MMORPGs are not just servers with a tacked-on front end.

Deciding to put icons over quest giver heads is a simple client-side graphic effect, but it makes a huge end-user difference. I think a lot of MUD-centric people would consider that sort of thing an afterthought, when the reality is the players play the front-end, not the back-end.

If you think of a MMORPG as a MUD with a graphical layer all that user-facing stuff will be treated as an afterthought.

[stray]

Thinking of MMORPG's as graphical MUD's almost strikes me as the same kind of thinking Microsoft had behind Windows 3.1 (as opposed to Apple's from-the-ground-up approach to GUI's).

[lamaros]

Raph, I both agree and disagree with what you are saying.

To me WOW represent a very thorough but shallow re-examination of MMORPGs. When I talk about polish I don't just talk about things like fewer glitches, I mean actual polish and sanding, which is iteratively smoothing out rough spots, shaving off sharp corners.

Why do quest givers in WoW have icons over their heads? Only because having to constantly run around town talking to everyone over and over again to get all the quests really sucks. So they removed the sucky parts. (The first time I made it to Windurst in FFXI I stopped playing for a month because the town was so large it depressed me, it took me an hour just to explore 1/5th of it)

They adhered very closely to the fundamental core of most MMORPGs and MUDs, but did not adhere closely to the outer layers. I would surmise this is because they are not wedded to those layers. They didn't help create those layers and they don't take them as givens.

That is the danger - taking things as givens. Why does crafting work the way it does? Why does getting a quest or using the UI work the way it does? Only because that's what we did before and it seemed to work ok...and nobody has come up with something better...

The graphical layer can not be an afterthought. The end user experience of getting quests, making items, drinking potions, moving around...that may not be any different on the server side but the server side is not the game.

"MUD with graphics" is not the same as "graphics based on a MUD." In WoW the end-user experience is what has been polished. Not so much the core mechanics and rules. But that is a valuable thing to do because MMORPGs are not just servers with a tacked-on front end.

Deciding to put icons over quest giver heads is a simple client-side graphic effect, but it makes a huge end-user difference. I think a lot of MUD-centric people would consider that sort of thing an afterthought, when the reality is the players play the front-end, not the back-end.

If you think of a MMORPG as a MUD with a graphical layer all that user-facing stuff will be treated as an afterthought.

I don't remember many MUDs I played having quests at all. And I've played a few. I wish WoW adhered closely to them in that regard. I hate quests, especially WoWs quests.

WoW is actually borrowing very heavily from single player games for the 'polish'.

[Trippy]

Thinking of MMORPG's as graphical MUD's almost strikes me as the same kind of thinking Microsoft had behind Windows 3.1 (as opposed to Apple's from-the-ground-up approach to GUI's).

Except that they are graphical MUDs. Sure the presentation and UI are different but fundamentally the gameplay is the same -- moving around, bashing monsters, collecting loot, and gaining experience.

I don't remember many MUDs I played having quests at all. And I've played a few. I wish WoW adhered closely to them in that regard. I hate quests, especially WoWs quests.

I played some and it's where EQ got its "guess the conversation text that triggers the quest" mechanic for its quests.

[Margalis]

Thinking of MMORPG's as graphical MUD's almost strikes me as the same kind of thinking Microsoft had behind Windows 3.1 (as opposed to Apple's from-the-ground-up approach to GUI's).

Except that they are graphical MUDs. Sure the presentation and UI are different but fundamentally the gameplay is the same -- moving around, bashing monsters, collecting loot, and gaining experience.

And Windows 3.1 was graphical DOS. And MacOSX is graphical unix commands. Yet Windows 3.1 and MacOSX are quite different.

UI *is* a fundamental part of gameplay. That is part of my point. To the end user it may be the most important part of gameplay.

If you have the exact same crafting rules and crafting works the same on the server, but one UI takes 100 clicks to make something and one takes 3 is that really the same gameplay?

All auction house variants transfer items across DB tables. That doesn't make all AH systems the same. Even if all the rules about what you can buy/sell are the same they *still* aren't all the same system.

You are taking a very narrow view of what "gameplay" actually is. The core fundamental rule set is not what defines gameplay, those rules are only a part of gameplay as a whole. Take Tetris. Now instead of using the arrow keys to move the blocks around you type "left" to move a block left and "rotate clockwise" to rotate it. I've just turned Tetris into unplayable trash by changing the control scheme. Have I changed the gameplay? I certainly have to the end user.

What matters is end-user experience. If "gameplay" doesn't capture that then gameplay is an irrelevant term. That is *the* WOW lesson. End-user experience is king. Your systems are only as good as the way users interact with them. It doesn't matter how great your quests are if finding quests is a pain in the ass, even if the solution is a 10 minute client-side graphical effect. The reality is that small graphical effect has HUGE gameplay implications. Now instead of spending an hour running around town talking to people trying to find quests I spend two minutes.

If that isn't gameplay then what is? How users play the game is the gameplay that matters. To me "run around for an hour lookng for quests" and "walk right up to the quest guy and grab your quest instantly" are totally different gameplay experiences.

[Trippy]

If you have the exact same crafting rules and crafting works the same on the server, but one UI takes 100 clicks to make something and one takes 3 is that really the same gameplay?

Yes it is. There are situations where I would consider the UI and presentation as part of the gameplay like with rhythm games and there are situations where the lines get blurred like with a FPS but if somebody asks me what WoW is about I would say what I said above. I wouldn't say well you move your mouse around to rotate your view and you use the WASD keys to move your 3D avatar around on the screen and you click on little icons and drag them around on the screen and you push the number keys to make your avatar do stuff, etc. A crappy UI and presentation can make what would otherwise be some fun gameplay into crappy gameplay but that's a UI issue and not what I consider part of the fundamental gameplay.

To build on your OS example, to me something like "word processing" is a separate concept than the UI that is used to allow you to do your word processing. Maybe it's a text oriented interface like Emacs or something crude like Electric Pencil or maybe you need to use "dot" commands like WordStar or maybe you have a nice WYSIWYG graphical UI with pull down menus and a mouse or whatever other UI people come up with in the future -- it's still just "word processing" to me.

[Roac]

I don't remember many MUDs I played having quests at all. And I've played a few. I wish WoW adhered closely to them in that regard. I hate quests, especially WoWs quests.

Huh?  MUDs were mostly heavily focused on quests.  You had quests, killing mobs, and whatever PvP/guild mechanics that were tossed in. 

[tkinnun0]

There are situations where I would consider the UI and presentation as part of the gameplay like with rhythm games and there are situations where the lines get blurred like with a FPS but if somebody asks me what WoW is about I would say what I said above.

Isn't that, more than anything, an indication of a bias against WoW?

[Venkman]

The analogy I would use is very different. MUD are to MMORPGs as Lynx was to Mosaic. The server side has not changed very significantly for a variety of reasons (and not having solely to do with imagination).

Yea, but what analogy would you use to explain that to the masses? :)

That is the danger - taking things as givens.

Exactly. But then, evolution is like. It takes what's given and tweaks. The definition of a "tweak" is based on the rules of the prior generation, for comparison sake.

[Trippy]

There are situations where I would consider the UI and presentation as part of the gameplay like with rhythm games and there are situations where the lines get blurred like with a FPS but if somebody asks me what WoW is about I would say what I said above.

Isn't that, more than anything, an indication of a bias against WoW?

I don't know is it? Maybe I am biased cause I played text MUDs. With games the "UI" is often an integral part of the gameplay -- I'm not saying that it never is. Baseball is not baseball if you aren't throwing a ball and swinging a bat. I do consider Quake's gameplay different than Wolf 3D's because Quake has true 3D presentation and positioning while Wolf 3D does not even though both fall under the classification of FPS. But with WoW I see myself doing the same things as I did in text MUDs -- moving around, killing mobs, getting loot, and leveling up my characters. The UI and presentation can make that gameplay more enjoyable but I'm still doing the same stuff.

Edit: swapped bat and ball