Originally posted by Stradden Steve Wison returns with his Weekly Casual Play column. This week, Steve weighs in on the world vs. game debate with a look back at his experiences in the original Ultima Online.
From a casual play perspective it's hard to imagine a worse game than what Ultima Online delivered a decade ago. It's also surprising that from that terrible genesis we have some of the great games we do today, along with the promise of more to come. Even games touted as being by and for the hardcore player, like Vanguard, have moved far away from the horrible experience that was UO.
Unfortunately a lot of people had the same impressions, and just did not understand how wonderful a game UO was. Equally unfortunate, the developers "listened to them" and ruined the game for another large group of subscribers that "did understand" the game.
Now they are beginning to undertand why "player generated content" is so important to a virtual "world", and where developer installed content is just fine for a "game".
There's a difference, and obviously the author of this artical "just did'nt get it", and some never will.
So long UO... you were great once. I mourned your passing years ago. Yet still I remember and look forward to a ressurection of some of the most fun I've ever had in an MMOg to date.
No more Trivial MMO's, let's get serious "again". Make a world, not a game What I listen to
Wow, I really can't believe all of the vitrol that has been spewed at the Author of the Article. Remember all, his experience in UO is his experience. He flailed around trying to find "the game" aka the "fun" couldn't find any direction either from the community (he did ask questions and was made fun of) or from the game itself. From what I have heard from fans of the game and others I know that I would have probably had the same reaction to UO. I would have been quite frustrated with not having any direction to go and to PKers ganking me the moment that I left a city or town to adventure to "experience" the game. Also, I still to this day cant see the fun in being ganked by characters you have no chance to beat. It just feels like another form of being bullied.
Now I don't want my "hand held" thoughout the game, but most modern game SHOULD spend some time teaching the player about the world and game play options. You see my tastes vary in MMOs. I like to craft, chat up a storm, go out to kill mobs, gather resources, but rarely do I like to do any one of them for the majority of my play time. When I go out to kill stuff, I would like to have a "reason" to kill them. That could be a quest or even a story reason that my character hates that kind of mob. I also like to go out and randomly explore stuff, I find that that kind of random wandering doesn't really resonate with others. So I prefer soloable play with the ability to group if and when I desire. Hell, I guess you can say that I enjoy just about every activity in moderation.
So I want a GAME to play, though I would enjoy a bit of a sandbox to call my own when I wish it. One thing that I LOVED about EQII was the ability to decorate my Inn Room, it was my own personal part of the game. It is also fun to explore other player's rooms/houses. IMHO while I liked the idea of player towns in SWG, they sure littered the landscape up and made Tattoine look more like a huge urban sprawl than a trackless desert waste.
So again like I was saying, ALL games should have a few "levels" of noob player hand holding. That way you generate new players who understand how to play and the options that are offered them esp if the later levels are truly open to anything. BTW, having to read a fansite before you play a game to gain that basic understanding is a cop out for the devs of the game. If you have to force players to learn the basics from somewhere else, then you have failed your job as a developer of a "fun" game.
It is really too bad that one cannot use historical references to "holy" games like EQ and UO. If one even attempts to point out their mistakes you get mobbed by all of the fanboys who convieently forget the bad stuff and only remember the good. Talking about the good and bad bits of a game can only help make new games better.
Remember there is a reason that WoW has over 2m US subscribers, and no other game has come close to those numbers in the US. IT isn't just about Lowest common denominator system requirements. It's because Blizzard has managed to make a game that is fairly engaging (even while grinding), and easy to learn to play. Also one that non-gamers seem to "get" and to be able to have fun with. Other games should be looking to WoW to see what WoW is doing right in their game, and what mistakes that they are making. Not to make a "WoW clone", but to make a game that builds on the Success that WoW has with a large portion of the gaming market. Oh, and I don't think it's fair anymore to say that WoW is only popular because of the Warcraft(AKA Blizzard fanboys, aka Battlenet Kiddies) audience. Those players subbed long ago. The new subs are because of the popularity of WoW itself, not from past games.
Originally posted by Beatnik59 To me, the whole "casual versus hardcore" debate is a non sequitur, and I think this entire article series on the "casual corner" is just misguided on a fundamental level. In fact, I think we have the entire notion of, "what is casual?," and "what is hardcore?," completely wrong. What we believe is that a "hardcore player" is one who has more time or money to devote to a game. Totally wrong. What a "hardcore player" really means is that the player loves the game so much, they want to spend more time, and more money there, and want to play it to the hilt. What we believe is that a "casual player" is one who has less time or money to devote to the game. Again, totally wrong. What a "casual player" really means is that the player is indifferent to the game, that they would rather do other things, play other games, and devote more free time to things other than the game. You look at hardcore versus casual drinking, or gambling, or drug use, its never about the differences in the thing obsessed over. Its about the emotional and psychological disposition of the obsessed. That's why some of the most "casual" games, like WoW, have far more "hardcore" habits displayed in its players, and why some of the most "hardcore" games, like EVE, have players that play it casually. It really has nothing to do with death penalties, realism, playability, travel times, PvP, crafting, etc. I'm convinced that's all just a distraction from the real issue, and that is, players will play games they like better more frequently than games they don't like as much. When they play that game exclusively, for many hours, they are now "hardcore," even if the game was only ever intended to be played casually. The question is not, I repeat, not : what is the difference between casual and hardcore players, or what is a hardcore game, versus a casual game? The real question we should be asking ourselves is: what causes the player to commit to a game more strongly, versus a game they can take or leave? See, we here are under the impression that the industry has determined that consumers of MMO entertainment want more casual games. What we haven't talked about is why the industry wants gamers to spend as little as possible in their games, instead of more time? When we answer that one, we'll see why we get "games," and not "worlds." Why we get looting, instead of crafting. Why we get portals, instead of big zones. Why we get levels, and not skills. Why we get more "twitch," and less character customization. Why roleplay has disappeared, and why we haven't moved past guilds as a social construct to organize players. In short, let's entertain the notion that it isn't the players who want casual games. Its the MMO companies who want players to approach the games casually. Questions?
Great post
I can't say I agree 100% but you are very close.
I think the real debate should be reality vrs trivial or Fun vrs tedium in game mechanics and rulesets. That is the real issue between hardcore and casual. That's what has happened over the years, and some of it is not so obvious. This thing called immersion.
No more Trivial MMO's, let's get serious "again". Make a world, not a game What I listen to
I just really felt like raving further on the subject in detail. Maybe just to get some things off my chest.
These are just my thoughts in response to this 10 year belated bash of Ultima Online, a game which I saw as a highly flawed first step in the right direction for MMORPGs which was never followed by another step forward since.
Read if you like.
Original Quotations from the 'article' will appear like this.
My comments will be blue like this.
From a casual play perspective it’s hard to imagine a worse game than what Ultima Online delivered a decade ago. It’s also surprising that from that terrible genesis we have some of the great games we do today, along with the promise of more to come. Even games touted as being by and for the hardcore player, like Vanguard, have moved far away from the horrible experience that was UO.
I guess this is just opinion but I haven't seen a game as good as Ultima Online since it first launched. Of course I can imagine a better game, but perhaps I can't imagine anything worse than those games that followed as far as MMOs became more like single player games with poor content played by tons of players. Most trends in the genre that I have seen are more like a backward step as they attempted to solve some of the admitted problems of an online world by arbitrary means.
Right out of the gates the very first thing I noticed was that Ultima Online had absolutely no content. From the moment the player was dumped in the starting city, there was no indication of where they should go or what should do. The developers simply threw the players into their world without so much as a starting quest to guide players to where the fun was. This concept alone was antithical to what every other game in the world did. All of the old RPGs gave the player an immediate goal which, at the very least, start them on their path. As a newcomer to this world, I wasn’t sure what the possibilities were. There were some randomly chosen skills from character creation that hinted at things that might be fun to pusue, but I had no hint as to how to start any of them.
I really don't understand this paragraph at all. If we are talking about all the 'old RPGs' like table top usually WE would determine what our goals were, and as far as computer RPGs sure you had content and direction but you didn't pay a monthly fee for it? Again I suppose it is just my opinion but right from the start the whole POINT of an MMORPG seemed to be a simulated world where you could REALLY find adventure and interaction with other players and NOT to be handed it as in a single player game, a movie, or a book. I took it to be the beginning of a new form of entertainment and yet current games play more and more like single player games. Sure there are lots of people to talk to but the same can be said for a chat room. Sure you can play with all those players, but the same can be said of any multi-player game. Contrived content for multiple users is no different to me than an FPS that supports 40 players. It shouldn't be about the number of people you play with, but the fact that you are ALWAYS playing with a massive number of players all interacting to shape a world by their actions.
On the first day of the game I wandered aimlessly; desperate to find something fun do. Figuring that fighting things might be fun, I set out to find some beasties with which to do combat. There were none. For some reason, the developers chose to create a world as their primary goal. In a world, the ecosystem might run out of monsters. This happens because, as a simulation, the environment can sustain only so many monsters. When they are hunted to extinction there are no more. A game is more lenient. If players need monsters, it makes them out of thin air since its goal is to entertain. The developers of UO for some reason didn’t care that players were paying subscription fees to be entertained. They chose to simulate a world and therefore deny players any new monster to enjoy killing if the simulation mandated that there should not be any. It’s an interesting concept for a university or environmental agency, but as a game it missed the key point that players want fun things to do.
Now granted UO had some things that needed to be worked on, but instead of making a 'game' that simply threw monsters at you because that was the whole point of the game there are many ways that a world could be improved to provide more dynamic situations for the players to interact with regardless of how many monsters were present. One way is to improve PvP and not shy away from it as so many games have started to do. Even those that claim to have it make it so that it really doesn't effect the world in any way. So many games have only one goal: To Kill monsters. Crafting usually only supports this. Levels and equipment are gained to kill more monsters of subsequent difficulty until you hit the ceiling and fight each other for no particular reason. I am at a loss to understand how anyone would start UO desperately trying to find something fun to do. I joined after having had countless thoughts of what could possibly be accomplished in such an open ended system. The game didn't really support a lot of what was possible and things could be done to improve in that direction but at least I felt like you could try and work within the framework of the world to accomplish an enjoyable goal. I attempted for form an underground thieving organization. There were secret passwords for recruits, planned ambushes on the roads and mad escapes when we found ourselves outmatched. Player cities although not a focus were also possible in rudimentary ways. All this could have been built upon but never was.
I did however find out almost immediately what a PK was. Faster than I could blink, a couple of other players riddled me with arrows and fireballs and looted the few crummy coppers I had in my bags. In a world the week are victims in the game of survival of the fittest. That game is a lot of fun if you’re the one doing the surviving, not so much when you’re the one constantly dirtnapping. And ever worse when it's dirtnapping coupled with item loss. As a simulation, it was a great experiment in observing the social trends in psychopaths. After all, simulations don’t care about fairness. Players of a game however become frustrated when the situation encountered is grossly imbalanced against them. As a newbie, just looking for something fun and interesting to do, being repeatedly killed was not making the experience any fonder.
As has been said, the danger was always actually quite exciting for many people, but it is true that a newbie doesn't like to be helpless against a player that for some reason has infinitely more power to hit and avoid being hit. Solutions to such things could have gone in better directions than in current games, one of the best being to lower level gaps and take the focus away from obtaining uber hit points and damage dealing.
On my second day I decided to try out crafting. I’d picked some crafting skills because the thought of being able to get away from combat and create items useful to other players sounded very interesting. Again the lack of content and starting missions really hurt the game once again. While I wanted to try out this crafting business I had literally no idea how to get started. Asking for help in chat only opened me up to insults from a mostly hostile audience. Just before giving up in complete frustration however an experienced player from the beta came to my aid. Other players I was beginning to discover could be a great resource but having to rely on the mercy of strangers made me feel more like a victim than I had during my PK encounters. Mining, I found out, required venturing out of the city and exposing myself to victimization yet again. I was also told cruel players would let me mine happily away only to gank me on the way back to town and then steal the labors of my virtual work. So I decided to give tailoring a shot. In no time at all I’d spent all of my cash on materials, improved some skills and made some items. Of course no one wanted those crummy newbie items, so I’d be forced to sell them to a vendor. Only once again, the specter of world over game reared its ugly head. The NPCs didn’t want my crummy crated items either, see they were simulated as well. Rather than be rewarded for the somewhat boring tasks of combining items in a virtual sweatshop of my own creation, I was stuck with items that were pretty much useless to everyone.
Once again a problem that could have been fixed by making an even more dynamic economic simulation where there are no useless items. No one in the real world crafts things just to increase skill level and throw away the item. I would advocate having low skilled crafters make horseshoes, torches, rope, etc. Simple items that everyone needs and need to be replaced regularly. Also there should be more localized markets and carrying goods between these should be lucrative. Of course, you'd have to get rid of rampant teleportation and have people actually experience the world and it's dynamic challenges, but that too would take a little work. Instead games just forget it and have the players endlessly linked to a few points of interest. Instead of monsters always dropping items if EVERYTHING was created by players including buildings, I think crafters would find no end to the useful services they could provide.
I’d had enough of the developers being wrong at every turn. Where they could have fudged the systems to reward players for partaking in the game, they instead chose to create a simulation of a real world. In the real world, there are ugly things like car wrecks and species extinction, I seriously doubt either are much fun. This was my first taste with the world versus game debate and it had left me firmly entrenched in the game camp. I knew that I wanted to enjoy myself more than marvel at the complexities of an ecosystem that would kill me through ennui.
It just seems funny to me that the author would lament the extinction of monsters. In any believable world wouldn't that be the goal of the people. The monsters should be a nuisance and just one obstacle to overcome in an area. If they are pushed to the brink I am sure the players could always find plenty of conflict with one another and after they have decimated themselves for a while the monsters can surely make a come back. Total extinction won't happen if the program isn't set up that way, but it is true, when the only thing to do in a game is kill monsters, they have to be force spawned on you. When the possibilities are endless, this is simply only one more variable in the adaptive play that becomes possible.
Furious that I’d blown $50 on what Computer Gaming World would go on to call “Coaster of the Year” I swore never to play another multiplayer game ever again. My only previous experience had been a couple of yawn inducing hours of The Realm. But then EverQuest eventually came along and showed that with a little game thrown in even playing a virtual rat catcher could be fun.
In closing, it is ironic to note that the "Coaster of the Year" has apparently become the "Coaster of the Last Ten Years" and I'd say that's a pretty good coaster even with all its flaws. In the end I saw UO as a new beginning, a new direction. It was the first step and surely it had its share of problems. Even I was disenchanted with the blatant limitations in the end as I tried to avoid the dev created content (leveling, etc) and simply try and leave a mark on the world with content and situations of my own making. At the time I held hope that the genre would progress, but instead all the challenges that could have pushed things forward were abandoned and easy quick fixes that hearken back to single player mechanics were slapped into place as the wonderful potential of MMORPGs disappears with every backward step we take.
I'm not going to quote your whole message, because that would just look tacky and be hard to read. Anyways, I am of the similar type of players that you come from. I never played UO, but the world over game was present in the beginning of DAoC, which was my first MMORPG. When I started playing MMORPGs, I've never played a computer game before. It was always consoles for me. As a newb MMORPG gamer, even before I picked up my first MMORPG, I thought that MMORPGs were meant for people who want to create a virtual life in an MMORPG online world, whether that be fantasy, Si-Fi, etc. I didn't think MMORPGs were about the grind. I wanted an advancement system that took years to master, because a person should always be able to improve themselves, just like in real life. This doesn't mean I wanted infinite levels or anything.
One of your comments really motivated me to want to start my own MMORPG company and hire on people with creative ideas like your. Such as the crafting comment where you said that a low level crafter can make easy things like horseshoes and rope, and as you get better you can make harder things. Either way, what you make is useful. That is brilliance and I know damn well that I won't see that kind of creativity in a MMORPG unless I make it myself. Unfortunetly, I can't start a MMORPG company, but I can get in one at the ground level once my IT degree is finished and offer up ideas like yours.
I think UO was raw. Raw is the best word for it. It was a harsh world, that was unfriendly to even those that wanted a virtual world to live in. But UO was the first of its kind and was a great piece of work for the first of its kind. The next step from there should have been a game that is like Darkfal. A virtual world with a skill-based system where everyone can compete...even the newb. A place where you can built cities and an empire where you can establish trade treaties with other player nations, wage war and conquer, or go the entire length of the game without raising a weapon by using good diplomacy. A game that forces players to RP by default. No need to try to immerse yourself in a game like Darkfall when being a soldier in your cities army is an actual role and not some pretend thing. Or a diplomat for your King, that travels with a well trained guard to forge new treaties and alliances with other player nations. No need to pretend to be that diplomat, because you really are that diplomat. Who needs to pretend RP like in WoW, when you have no choice but to play a role if you want to survive in the game.
Having player nations is the next step from UO. PKing like in UO is managed by the strong organized player nations. People think twice about mouthing off or being an asshat in the game, because they might be declared KOS by the strongest nation in the game. The same with murderers and bandits. Sure this could backfire and a bad nation may rule, but chaotic people don't rule for long and can easily be toppled by the overwhelming majority who would rather play nice and build up a strong nation.
Well, that's all I have to say. I can't speak more of it, because it depresses me to know that people like us have been ignored by companies for all these years. I am not a pker, I am considered a roleplayer. Or a person who wants to live in a simulated fantasy or Sci-Fi world and be apart of a real player ran government and trade in a real economic system. A place where war is a way to settle disputes and Pkers are actually murderers and are KOS. I am for the world over game model.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
While I somewhat sympathize with the author, an entire article to talk about why he hated UO wasn't really necessary. A far more compelling article would have discussed why things like he experienced aren't considered as "fun" as the way other games work.
Now, that isn't to say that UO wasn't flawed. It was. It is. People can weep and moan all they want, but cold hard math is pretty hard to ignore. How many players are still playing UO, compared to games like WOW? It's easy to write off the "haters", but honestly, the game wasn't made to satisfy even the average gamer, much less the average person.
Games only exist for one purpose: to entertain us. If one game entertains more people than another, then yeah, other companies will want to repeat that formula for success. That usually means appealling to the lowest common denomenator. UO satisfied some gamers, yes, but only a certain percentage, and it never attempted to change or adapt to get any other types of gamers.
WOW was made as simple as possible, so that anyone could get into it easy. Consequently, it's got the popularity, and the profits. Oh, don't take this to mean that WOW is a technically superior game. I like EQ2's crafting system better, CoX's guild-based PVP and guild bases, etc. Other games excel in certain game mechanics better, yes. So how did WOW manage to do better in getting that many folks to play? It didn't obfuscate itself. You don't need a guide to play it. You don't have to spend hours figuring it out. You don't have to connive the game to get it to work for you. You just sit down and play the game. This isn't rocket science, folks: if it isn't immediately entertaining, most games do not enjoy the same success.
So cry about the lack of compelling or in-depth gameplay in modern MMOs all you want. Cry a river if it soothes your tortured soul. But it won't change the fact that if you want more people to play an MMO, you have to sacrifice some of the kinds of content that satisfy you personally so that others will want to play the game with you. UO could have survived by lessening the impact of allowing players to so drastically affect the gameplay of newer players, but they didn't, and here we are.
Pick quality or quantity. You can't have both. Not in real life, and sure as hell not in any game.
Originally posted by eburn Yeah, let's celebrate MMO's current blandness by front page listing one of the longest whines I've ever seen.Tip for MMORPG.com, get actual writers to contribute to the site. Picking up long winded cry babies from the forums just doesn't seem up to par with the actual news posted.
2 days in an MMO, and he comes to this conclusion?
Yeah I read and replied on this a few days or so ago, he did'nt understand the game so he posts an opinion based on ignorance.
Yadda Yadda Yadda...
No more Trivial MMO's, let's get serious "again". Make a world, not a game What I listen to
Hmm, This artical has done one thing positive, posters to this topic have brought a lot of info to the subject. I agree that UO being attacked is unjustified 8 to 10 years after the fact. Name a MMO that has lasted that long without addressing its troubles in patches and fixes? I clearly remeber hearing about the PKing in UO and deciding that was not the game for me (in '97). Things have changed and I have a different view and perception of MMO's. This artical is ammo for the World Simulator Vs. Casual Game War. I just see it as 2 different Catagories to the MMO market. Somegames have shades of both but usally fall in either. What would make a solution to this situation? How about a Casual (Single player driven, Quest guided, Level grinding) Game that once you Master, Unlocks a World Simulator. You learn the basic combat moves with the Casual game set and basic machanics but to qualifiy for the full world you have to graduate as a master of your chosen path. Once Master, you then can develop your character based on Skill Tree and customize to your hearts content. The Casual Game would be much more than a Tutorial but not as detailed and intricate as the full World. From my understanding, this is the flaw of WOW. There is little more to achieve after you reach level 60(now 70). Adding new adventure areas is fun to explore but adding new Achievements is the spice of a good game. Just an idea. Either way, this thread got me to thinking and thats what the author really should have wanted.
i could be wrong but Age Of Conan is doing this by having first 20 levels as single player then you enter the mmorpg world - could be good?
i really don't get what its all about. Talking about casual play and then throws in a game that is not at all casual. So is it about defending the casual players?? I say screw the casual players they are wrecking the already fecked up MMOs
Funny that someonbe that is writting for a MMORPG game site is sorry to say but this dumb to state things about on of the most inovative games ever. Please don't compare such a old game with today's standart of games, then yes the game sucks, but at the time this game was to new that you could not compare it to any game, so i wonder how much truth is being told in the OP's artical.
Quite frankly this article is something id imagine being spawned by a World of Warcraft player (im going to dig at wow in this post so blizzard fanbois might want to skip reading it), you can say that Uo, Swg etc were to hard but from my perspective they were awesome.
I like having the freedom to craft my own character, to make it my story not the story of myself and every other player that is playing the game, poor freaking Edwin Van Cleef has been killed so many times by almost every single alliance player who is playing WoW.
I started off on my first WoW day going from level 1 to level 20 that was 1/3 of the journey to max level, in my first day I had never done that before in any mmo ive played, it was just so easy and the rest of my wow journey has been the same way , get a bunch of quests - complete the easy soloable quests – get xp – repeat until level 60.
I didn’t feel like I had accomplished something when I hit level 60 in world of warcraft, I didn’t feel like I had done something great when I got full tier 1, then moved on to tier 2 I still don’t feel like ive accomplished anything in world of warcraft despite having over 100 days /played on my main character.
When I hit Teras Kasi Master in SWG I did, when I unlocked my Jedi I did, the first time I crafted T21 rifles that were the best non enhanced weapons on the server I did.
The reason is that in World of Warcraft I feel like it all got given to me the hardest challenge in the game was finding a guild that was driven enough to manage the 4 – 6 hour boredoms that the dungeons are.
MMORPG’s are always time based in that you are rewarded after how much time you spend playing but while WoW keeps this going I don’t feel that ive accomplished anything in that game hell arguing on the wow forums is more of a challenge than the game itself.
My biggest fear is other companies trying to copy wow because its not a good game in any other way than that its smooth and lets people get into it easily, its not an mmorpg it’s a Theme park…
You know, thinking about it a bit more I realize that UO, although it had many aspects of a world simulation, still had a big focus on the 'game' aspect that the author of the article kept harping about. There were levels and a player could invest time to become more powerful. Of course it wasn't the sole focus of the game as it is with most contemporary MMOS. Because of this, when UO launched I played it on a very casual basis. I was still young back then and my time on the computer was limited. Looking back I realize I never anticipated the game aspects of UO and so never participated in them. I simply logged in and experienced the world for a little while and then logged out. I never leveled up, never cared about my stuff. Any time I was attacked in the woods by PKs it was an EVENT not a tragedy. I didn't really have anything to loose, I just took it as part of the danger of the world and it always kept me alert and got my heart pounding. It seems to me now that an MMO can actually be more casual by being completely 'world' and not really any 'game' at all.
I am sure we can agree that most MMOs are currently based on the grind where you spend a huge amount of time adding and adding to the stats and abilities and equipment of your character towards some 'end game content' and anything that actually HAPPENS to you along the way to set you back or detract from this upward treadmill really makes you mad. Why? Because you spent so much time getting to that point and frankly getting there wasn't all that fun. People are always trying to get to the next level because actually playing the game minute by minute is not the thing that keeps anyone interested. If there was a shortcut to the top, I'd bet most would find it and take it. In other words, there is nothing else to do in the 'game' aspect.
When the game is a dynamic world and goals and quests aren't handed to players with all this pre-programmed content that is so raved about, then players who can handle that will long in and just PLAY. It will be more about what happened that time, not how 'far' they got. You can play for as much or as little as you like and it never really would matter. What ever time you spent in the game would be an experience within the game world. The thing is, such a world has to do away almost completely with the game aspects or the players will just jump on the level treadmill and complain when anything actually happens to them.
If this could be done, then for once an MMO would base its content on the interactions of the players. Player vs .Player actions would no longer be seen as an annoyance that detracts from the constant level grind (the game), but instead would be welcomed as events and challenges that would be anticipated, planned for, worked against. Then the time spent playing the game would be about what the players are doing, rather than what they are trying to acquire. You can never fall behind in doing, and so true casual play is found.
Comments
Originally posted by Stradden
Steve Wison returns with his Weekly Casual Play column. This week, Steve weighs in on the world vs. game debate with a look back at his experiences in the original Ultima Online.
Unfortunately a lot of people had the same impressions, and just did not understand how wonderful a game UO was. Equally unfortunate, the developers "listened to them" and ruined the game for another large group of subscribers that "did understand" the game.
Now they are beginning to undertand why "player generated content" is so important to a virtual "world", and where developer installed content is just fine for a "game".
There's a difference, and obviously the author of this artical "just did'nt get it", and some never will.
So long UO... you were great once. I mourned your passing years ago. Yet still I remember and look forward to a ressurection of some of the most fun I've ever had in an MMOg to date.
No more Trivial MMO's, let's get serious "again". Make a world, not a game
What I listen to
Now I don't want my "hand held" thoughout the game, but most modern game SHOULD spend some time teaching the player about the world and game play options. You see my tastes vary in MMOs. I like to craft, chat up a storm, go out to kill mobs, gather resources, but rarely do I like to do any one of them for the majority of my play time. When I go out to kill stuff, I would like to have a "reason" to kill them. That could be a quest or even a story reason that my character hates that kind of mob. I also like to go out and randomly explore stuff, I find that that kind of random wandering doesn't really resonate with others. So I prefer soloable play with the ability to group if and when I desire. Hell, I guess you can say that I enjoy just about every activity in moderation.
So I want a GAME to play, though I would enjoy a bit of a sandbox to call my own when I wish it. One thing that I LOVED about EQII was the ability to decorate my Inn Room, it was my own personal part of the game. It is also fun to explore other player's rooms/houses. IMHO while I liked the idea of player towns in SWG, they sure littered the landscape up and made Tattoine look more like a huge urban sprawl than a trackless desert waste.
So again like I was saying, ALL games should have a few "levels" of noob player hand holding. That way you generate new players who understand how to play and the options that are offered them esp if the later levels are truly open to anything. BTW, having to read a fansite before you play a game to gain that basic understanding is a cop out for the devs of the game. If you have to force players to learn the basics from somewhere else, then you have failed your job as a developer of a "fun" game.
It is really too bad that one cannot use historical references to "holy" games like EQ and UO. If one even attempts to point out their mistakes you get mobbed by all of the fanboys who convieently forget the bad stuff and only remember the good. Talking about the good and bad bits of a game can only help make new games better.
Remember there is a reason that WoW has over 2m US subscribers, and no other game has come close to those numbers in the US. IT isn't just about Lowest common denominator system requirements. It's because Blizzard has managed to make a game that is fairly engaging (even while grinding), and easy to learn to play. Also one that non-gamers seem to "get" and to be able to have fun with. Other games should be looking to WoW to see what WoW is doing right in their game, and what mistakes that they are making. Not to make a "WoW clone", but to make a game that builds on the Success that WoW has with a large portion of the gaming market. Oh, and I don't think it's fair anymore to say that WoW is only popular because of the Warcraft(AKA Blizzard fanboys, aka Battlenet Kiddies) audience. Those players subbed long ago. The new subs are because of the popularity of WoW itself, not from past games.
Great post
I can't say I agree 100% but you are very close.
I think the real debate should be reality vrs trivial or Fun vrs tedium in game mechanics and rulesets. That is the real issue between hardcore and casual.
That's what has happened over the years, and some of it is not so obvious.
This thing called immersion.
No more Trivial MMO's, let's get serious "again". Make a world, not a game
What I listen to
I just really felt like raving further on the subject in detail. Maybe just to get some things off my chest.
These are just my thoughts in response to this 10 year belated bash of Ultima Online, a game which I saw as a highly flawed first step in the right direction for MMORPGs which was never followed by another step forward since.
Read if you like.
Original Quotations from the 'article' will appear like this.
My comments will be blue like this.
From a casual play perspective it’s hard to imagine a worse game than what Ultima Online delivered a decade ago. It’s also surprising that from that terrible genesis we have some of the great games we do today, along with the promise of more to come. Even games touted as being by and for the hardcore player, like Vanguard, have moved far away from the horrible experience that was UO.
I guess this is just opinion but I haven't seen a game as good as Ultima Online since it first launched. Of course I can imagine a better game, but perhaps I can't imagine anything worse than those games that followed as far as MMOs became more like single player games with poor content played by tons of players. Most trends in the genre that I have seen are more like a backward step as they attempted to solve some of the admitted problems of an online world by arbitrary means.Right out of the gates the very first thing I noticed was that Ultima Online had absolutely no content. From the moment the player was dumped in the starting city, there was no indication of where they should go or what should do. The developers simply threw the players into their world without so much as a starting quest to guide players to where the fun was. This concept alone was antithical to what every other game in the world did. All of the old RPGs gave the player an immediate goal which, at the very least, start them on their path. As a newcomer to this world, I wasn’t sure what the possibilities were. There were some randomly chosen skills from character creation that hinted at things that might be fun to pusue, but I had no hint as to how to start any of them.
I really don't understand this paragraph at all. If we are talking about all the 'old RPGs' like table top usually WE would determine what our goals were, and as far as computer RPGs sure you had content and direction but you didn't pay a monthly fee for it? Again I suppose it is just my opinion but right from the start the whole POINT of an MMORPG seemed to be a simulated world where you could REALLY find adventure and interaction with other players and NOT to be handed it as in a single player game, a movie, or a book. I took it to be the beginning of a new form of entertainment and yet current games play more and more like single player games. Sure there are lots of people to talk to but the same can be said for a chat room. Sure you can play with all those players, but the same can be said of any multi-player game. Contrived content for multiple users is no different to me than an FPS that supports 40 players. It shouldn't be about the number of people you play with, but the fact that you are ALWAYS playing with a massive number of players all interacting to shape a world by their actions.On the first day of the game I wandered aimlessly; desperate to find something fun do. Figuring that fighting things might be fun, I set out to find some beasties with which to do combat. There were none. For some reason, the developers chose to create a world as their primary goal. In a world, the ecosystem might run out of monsters. This happens because, as a simulation, the environment can sustain only so many monsters. When they are hunted to extinction there are no more. A game is more lenient. If players need monsters, it makes them out of thin air since its goal is to entertain. The developers of UO for some reason didn’t care that players were paying subscription fees to be entertained. They chose to simulate a world and therefore deny players any new monster to enjoy killing if the simulation mandated that there should not be any. It’s an interesting concept for a university or environmental agency, but as a game it missed the key point that players want fun things to do.
Now granted UO had some things that needed to be worked on, but instead of making a 'game' that simply threw monsters at you because that was the whole point of the game there are many ways that a world could be improved to provide more dynamic situations for the players to interact with regardless of how many monsters were present. One way is to improve PvP and not shy away from it as so many games have started to do. Even those that claim to have it make it so that it really doesn't effect the world in any way. So many games have only one goal: To Kill monsters. Crafting usually only supports this. Levels and equipment are gained to kill more monsters of subsequent difficulty until you hit the ceiling and fight each other for no particular reason. I am at a loss to understand how anyone would start UO desperately trying to find something fun to do. I joined after having had countless thoughts of what could possibly be accomplished in such an open ended system. The game didn't really support a lot of what was possible and things could be done to improve in that direction but at least I felt like you could try and work within the framework of the world to accomplish an enjoyable goal. I attempted for form an underground thieving organization. There were secret passwords for recruits, planned ambushes on the roads and mad escapes when we found ourselves outmatched. Player cities although not a focus were also possible in rudimentary ways. All this could have been built upon but never was.
I did however find out almost immediately what a PK was. Faster than I could blink, a couple of other players riddled me with arrows and fireballs and looted the few crummy coppers I had in my bags. In a world the week are victims in the game of survival of the fittest. That game is a lot of fun if you’re the one doing the surviving, not so much when you’re the one constantly dirtnapping. And ever worse when it's dirtnapping coupled with item loss. As a simulation, it was a great experiment in observing the social trends in psychopaths. After all, simulations don’t care about fairness. Players of a game however become frustrated when the situation encountered is grossly imbalanced against them. As a newbie, just looking for something fun and interesting to do, being repeatedly killed was not making the experience any fonder.
As has been said, the danger was always actually quite exciting for many people, but it is true that a newbie doesn't like to be helpless against a player that for some reason has infinitely more power to hit and avoid being hit. Solutions to such things could have gone in better directions than in current games, one of the best being to lower level gaps and take the focus away from obtaining uber hit points and damage dealing.
On my second day I decided to try out crafting. I’d picked some crafting skills because the thought of being able to get away from combat and create items useful to other players sounded very interesting. Again the lack of content and starting missions really hurt the game once again. While I wanted to try out this crafting business I had literally no idea how to get started. Asking for help in chat only opened me up to insults from a mostly hostile audience. Just before giving up in complete frustration however an experienced player from the beta came to my aid. Other players I was beginning to discover could be a great resource but having to rely on the mercy of strangers made me feel more like a victim than I had during my PK encounters. Mining, I found out, required venturing out of the city and exposing myself to victimization yet again. I was also told cruel players would let me mine happily away only to gank me on the way back to town and then steal the labors of my virtual work. So I decided to give tailoring a shot. In no time at all I’d spent all of my cash on materials, improved some skills and made some items. Of course no one wanted those crummy newbie items, so I’d be forced to sell them to a vendor. Only once again, the specter of world over game reared its ugly head. The NPCs didn’t want my crummy crated items either, see they were simulated as well. Rather than be rewarded for the somewhat boring tasks of combining items in a virtual sweatshop of my own creation, I was stuck with items that were pretty much useless to everyone.
Once again a problem that could have been fixed by making an even more dynamic economic simulation where there are no useless items. No one in the real world crafts things just to increase skill level and throw away the item. I would advocate having low skilled crafters make horseshoes, torches, rope, etc. Simple items that everyone needs and need to be replaced regularly. Also there should be more localized markets and carrying goods between these should be lucrative. Of course, you'd have to get rid of rampant teleportation and have people actually experience the world and it's dynamic challenges, but that too would take a little work. Instead games just forget it and have the players endlessly linked to a few points of interest. Instead of monsters always dropping items if EVERYTHING was created by players including buildings, I think crafters would find no end to the useful services they could provide.
I’d had enough of the developers being wrong at every turn. Where they could have fudged the systems to reward players for partaking in the game, they instead chose to create a simulation of a real world. In the real world, there are ugly things like car wrecks and species extinction, I seriously doubt either are much fun. This was my first taste with the world versus game debate and it had left me firmly entrenched in the game camp. I knew that I wanted to enjoy myself more than marvel at the complexities of an ecosystem that would kill me through ennui.
It just seems funny to me that the author would lament the extinction of monsters. In any believable world wouldn't that be the goal of the people. The monsters should be a nuisance and just one obstacle to overcome in an area. If they are pushed to the brink I am sure the players could always find plenty of conflict with one another and after they have decimated themselves for a while the monsters can surely make a come back. Total extinction won't happen if the program isn't set up that way, but it is true, when the only thing to do in a game is kill monsters, they have to be force spawned on you. When the possibilities are endless, this is simply only one more variable in the adaptive play that becomes possible.
Furious that I’d blown $50 on what Computer Gaming World would go on to call “Coaster of the Year” I swore never to play another multiplayer game ever again. My only previous experience had been a couple of yawn inducing hours of The Realm. But then EverQuest eventually came along and showed that with a little game thrown in even playing a virtual rat catcher could be fun.
In closing, it is ironic to note that the "Coaster of the Year" has apparently become the "Coaster of the Last Ten Years" and I'd say that's a pretty good coaster even with all its flaws. In the end I saw UO as a new beginning, a new direction. It was the first step and surely it had its share of problems. Even I was disenchanted with the blatant limitations in the end as I tried to avoid the dev created content (leveling, etc) and simply try and leave a mark on the world with content and situations of my own making. At the time I held hope that the genre would progress, but instead all the challenges that could have pushed things forward were abandoned and easy quick fixes that hearken back to single player mechanics were slapped into place as the wonderful potential of MMORPGs disappears with every backward step we take.
IronOre - Forging the Future
Ironore,
I'm not going to quote your whole message, because that would just look tacky and be hard to read. Anyways, I am of the similar type of players that you come from. I never played UO, but the world over game was present in the beginning of DAoC, which was my first MMORPG. When I started playing MMORPGs, I've never played a computer game before. It was always consoles for me. As a newb MMORPG gamer, even before I picked up my first MMORPG, I thought that MMORPGs were meant for people who want to create a virtual life in an MMORPG online world, whether that be fantasy, Si-Fi, etc. I didn't think MMORPGs were about the grind. I wanted an advancement system that took years to master, because a person should always be able to improve themselves, just like in real life. This doesn't mean I wanted infinite levels or anything.
One of your comments really motivated me to want to start my own MMORPG company and hire on people with creative ideas like your. Such as the crafting comment where you said that a low level crafter can make easy things like horseshoes and rope, and as you get better you can make harder things. Either way, what you make is useful. That is brilliance and I know damn well that I won't see that kind of creativity in a MMORPG unless I make it myself. Unfortunetly, I can't start a MMORPG company, but I can get in one at the ground level once my IT degree is finished and offer up ideas like yours.
I think UO was raw. Raw is the best word for it. It was a harsh world, that was unfriendly to even those that wanted a virtual world to live in. But UO was the first of its kind and was a great piece of work for the first of its kind. The next step from there should have been a game that is like Darkfal. A virtual world with a skill-based system where everyone can compete...even the newb. A place where you can built cities and an empire where you can establish trade treaties with other player nations, wage war and conquer, or go the entire length of the game without raising a weapon by using good diplomacy. A game that forces players to RP by default. No need to try to immerse yourself in a game like Darkfall when being a soldier in your cities army is an actual role and not some pretend thing. Or a diplomat for your King, that travels with a well trained guard to forge new treaties and alliances with other player nations. No need to pretend to be that diplomat, because you really are that diplomat. Who needs to pretend RP like in WoW, when you have no choice but to play a role if you want to survive in the game.
Having player nations is the next step from UO. PKing like in UO is managed by the strong organized player nations. People think twice about mouthing off or being an asshat in the game, because they might be declared KOS by the strongest nation in the game. The same with murderers and bandits. Sure this could backfire and a bad nation may rule, but chaotic people don't rule for long and can easily be toppled by the overwhelming majority who would rather play nice and build up a strong nation.
Well, that's all I have to say. I can't speak more of it, because it depresses me to know that people like us have been ignored by companies for all these years. I am not a pker, I am considered a roleplayer. Or a person who wants to live in a simulated fantasy or Sci-Fi world and be apart of a real player ran government and trade in a real economic system. A place where war is a way to settle disputes and Pkers are actually murderers and are KOS. I am for the world over game model.
MMORPG's w/ Max level characters: DAoC, SWG, & WoW
Currently Playing: WAR
Preferred Playstyle: Roleplay/adventurous, in a sandbox game.
While I somewhat sympathize with the author, an entire article to talk about why he hated UO wasn't really necessary. A far more compelling article would have discussed why things like he experienced aren't considered as "fun" as the way other games work.
Now, that isn't to say that UO wasn't flawed. It was. It is. People can weep and moan all they want, but cold hard math is pretty hard to ignore. How many players are still playing UO, compared to games like WOW? It's easy to write off the "haters", but honestly, the game wasn't made to satisfy even the average gamer, much less the average person.
Games only exist for one purpose: to entertain us. If one game entertains more people than another, then yeah, other companies will want to repeat that formula for success. That usually means appealling to the lowest common denomenator. UO satisfied some gamers, yes, but only a certain percentage, and it never attempted to change or adapt to get any other types of gamers.
WOW was made as simple as possible, so that anyone could get into it easy. Consequently, it's got the popularity, and the profits. Oh, don't take this to mean that WOW is a technically superior game. I like EQ2's crafting system better, CoX's guild-based PVP and guild bases, etc. Other games excel in certain game mechanics better, yes. So how did WOW manage to do better in getting that many folks to play? It didn't obfuscate itself. You don't need a guide to play it. You don't have to spend hours figuring it out. You don't have to connive the game to get it to work for you. You just sit down and play the game. This isn't rocket science, folks: if it isn't immediately entertaining, most games do not enjoy the same success.
So cry about the lack of compelling or in-depth gameplay in modern MMOs all you want. Cry a river if it soothes your tortured soul. But it won't change the fact that if you want more people to play an MMO, you have to sacrifice some of the kinds of content that satisfy you personally so that others will want to play the game with you. UO could have survived by lessening the impact of allowing players to so drastically affect the gameplay of newer players, but they didn't, and here we are.
Pick quality or quantity. You can't have both. Not in real life, and sure as hell not in any game.
Yeah I read and replied on this a few days or so ago, he did'nt understand the game so he posts an opinion based on ignorance.
Yadda Yadda Yadda...
No more Trivial MMO's, let's get serious "again". Make a world, not a game
What I listen to
i really don't get what its all about. Talking about casual play and then throws in a game that is not at all casual. So is it about defending the casual players?? I say screw the casual players they are wrecking the already fecked up MMOs
Quite frankly this article is something id imagine being spawned by a World of Warcraft player (im going to dig at wow in this post so blizzard fanbois might want to skip reading it), you can say that Uo, Swg etc were to hard but from my perspective they were awesome.
I like having the freedom to craft my own character, to make it my story not the story of myself and every other player that is playing the game, poor freaking Edwin Van Cleef has been killed so many times by almost every single alliance player who is playing WoW.
I started off on my first WoW day going from level 1 to level 20 that was 1/3 of the journey to max level, in my first day I had never done that before in any mmo ive played, it was just so easy and the rest of my wow journey has been the same way , get a bunch of quests - complete the easy soloable quests – get xp – repeat until level 60.
I didn’t feel like I had accomplished something when I hit level 60 in world of warcraft, I didn’t feel like I had done something great when I got full tier 1, then moved on to tier 2 I still don’t feel like ive accomplished anything in world of warcraft despite having over 100 days /played on my main character.
When I hit Teras Kasi Master in SWG I did, when I unlocked my Jedi I did, the first time I crafted T21 rifles that were the best non enhanced weapons on the server I did.
The reason is that in World of Warcraft I feel like it all got given to me the hardest challenge in the game was finding a guild that was driven enough to manage the 4 – 6 hour boredoms that the dungeons are.
MMORPG’s are always time based in that you are rewarded after how much time you spend playing but while WoW keeps this going I don’t feel that ive accomplished anything in that game hell arguing on the wow forums is more of a challenge than the game itself.
My biggest fear is other companies trying to copy wow because its not a good game in any other way than that its smooth and lets people get into it easily, its not an mmorpg it’s a Theme park…
I am sure we can agree that most MMOs are currently based on the grind where you spend a huge amount of time adding and adding to the stats and abilities and equipment of your character towards some 'end game content' and anything that actually HAPPENS to you along the way to set you back or detract from this upward treadmill really makes you mad. Why? Because you spent so much time getting to that point and frankly getting there wasn't all that fun. People are always trying to get to the next level because actually playing the game minute by minute is not the thing that keeps anyone interested. If there was a shortcut to the top, I'd bet most would find it and take it. In other words, there is nothing else to do in the 'game' aspect.
When the game is a dynamic world and goals and quests aren't handed to players with all this pre-programmed content that is so raved about, then players who can handle that will long in and just PLAY. It will be more about what happened that time, not how 'far' they got. You can play for as much or as little as you like and it never really would matter. What ever time you spent in the game would be an experience within the game world. The thing is, such a world has to do away almost completely with the game aspects or the players will just jump on the level treadmill and complain when anything actually happens to them.
If this could be done, then for once an MMO would base its content on the interactions of the players. Player vs .Player actions would no longer be seen as an annoyance that detracts from the constant level grind (the game), but instead would be welcomed as events and challenges that would be anticipated, planned for, worked against. Then the time spent playing the game would be about what the players are doing, rather than what they are trying to acquire. You can never fall behind in doing, and so true casual play is found.
IronOre - Forging the Future