What's wrong with MMOs...

I'll try and keep this brief.

I probably bored you to tears with that last one.

I know I cried reading it. But I felt it important to give some context to the proceedings.

So what's wrong with MMOs? Why, with all the power of modern computing do they, and again as always - IMHO - fall short of the mark?

Well there's many reasons for this, but for me, the single greatest atmosphere destroyer is the questing. What I hate about questing in MMOs is that I can join a game with a new character, grab the first quest from... um, Otto the Barkeep at the Slaughtered Orc - whose cellar is glutted with rats.

The thing is. You're previous character did this mission 6 months ago. And every starting player does this mission.

Hundreds of times a day Otto is paying people to clear his cellar of rats. For me, this destroys the realism. For a start, Otto must be sitting on Fort Knox the amount he pays out for pest control. Secondly, clearly people aren't doing the job right, because seconds later he's paying someone else to murder rats.

Now I appreciate the restrictions in quest generation in computer games. Computers lack the instant versatility of the mind to instantly ad lib an adventure - which any GM worth his bath salts has done admirably many times.

But taking this quest generation as a whole, essentially what MMOs typically present to players is a single player experience of a multi-player world. Sure you see a bunch of other players wandering around doing stuff, but that guy you see over there with the Nike platemail and flaming sword has just killed that dragon you're just about to set off to slay.

The world is perpetual, but the story is individual and endlessly replayed.

So how to fix this problem?

For me the solution is pretty simple. If you think that WoW has somewhere in the region of seven million players. All paying circa $15 dollar / month to play. That means WoW is generating somewhere in the region of $75m dollar / month in revenue.

They can afford to hire more story-writers, more content-generators, more of everything, so that the world they present truly is perpetual, and the story constantly evolving. If you missed that volcano erupt last month, destroying an important town. Then you missed it. If you missed Otto and his rat infestations... don't worry, there's more quests to do.

That's great, but it doesn't really tell us how all this can be achieved, pilch.

I'm coming to that.

So, major stories should be developed constantly and run concurrently across different regions. Each story / region combination creates a subset of quest possibilities.

For example. The Great Goblin Invasion (sorry, I'm making this up as I go along, and being brief for the sake of, um... well, brevity).

Goblins have been using Dark Powers to strengthen their numbers for decades, and now is the time for the uprising. Goblin Corsairs have begun attacking the Scattered Isles (an archipelago of free and accepted peoples).

This major story and region then generates myriad random quests, of the ilk:

action, location, object, item...

HUNT, KILL, RETRIEVE, RESCUE (action); in / from DOCKS, PENINSULA, BLEAK MOUNTAIN, DEEP FOREST, SHADY HOLLOW (location); GOBLIN SHAMAN, CHIEF, FARMER'S DAUGHTER, BANDITS (object) and be rewarded with; 100 Gold, SWORD OF HORIZONS, WAND OF CHICKEN LEGS (whatever, item).

Now obviously some restrictions are required to be imposed on these elements, so the random mission does not ask you to HUNT the FARMER'S DAUGHTER in the DEEP WOODS for a WAND OF CHICKEN LEGS. Though, I never did trust that Farmer's Daughter.

But you get my point. Do you?

By randomly generating quests based upon the over-arching story episode currently running, in the region the player currently is, myriad sub quests can be generated resulting in no player ever having to repeat the same mission.

But all this merely leads me onto (an arguably) more significant point. Player impact upon the world. This is the cause of yet more loss of atmosphere (IMHO) in MMOs compared to P&P (Pen & Paper) role-playing.

In the best P&P games I've played in, or GMed, the players ended up more often than not, having a significant impact upon the world. They began as lowly farmhands seeking adventure, and culminated as leaders of vast armies commanding terrible powers. This concept in my experience is rarely achieved online.

Less than four hours of sleep has addled my brains, so I shall return to this subject later.

My next post will be about how MMOs can provide players with the opportunity to exact a proper impact upon the world, and thus shape its events.