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GM driven events in MMORPG ?
NineDots
Member Posts: 26
I was wondering if it is frequent to see events directly driven by GMs (Game Masters) in MMORPG?
What I mean is when GMs would actually take direct control of some of the game mechanics such as monsters to interact with players.
Here is a recent example where GMs took control of monsters to attack cities:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dd4TcOdO5A
Do you know of any other MMO with such events?
Comments
http://ihavereturned.com/events.html
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Well, EvE is not really a MMORPG...so that does not really count.
Well thats biased opnion doesn´t win your brownie , EVE is a MMORPG .
People do roleplay there , do people in darkfall not roleplay ?
About GM events , they are done once in a while on smaller mmo´s like City of Heroes . DDO LOTRO .
On bigger MMO usually the GM´s Dont dare to show themself even during events , cause of the strict no interference policy in place , even if in some mmo sometimes a GM accidently missclicked in embarrasing places
But truth is best interaction i had with Live GM´s showing face to face , with events and problems was city of heroes .
I'm curious why you feel EVE Online is not an MMORPG. Could you elaborate on that?
In any case, UO would be another example. Live events, listed as 'EM' events here, are a common thing in UO.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I'd like to see GM participation go to the next level. GMs playing as characters with a mission.
Imagine a GM playing an evil demi-god of great power, but if he gets killed by players, he's dead for good. And he has goals, set as layers, and each goal gives him more power in the game, and also has a meaningful impact. And one of his goals is to gather players as worshippers/followers.
But of course, you need the right kind of game for this.
Once upon a time....
Alganon was planning on hiring actors to play the gods in the game. Really doubt that's going to happen now, but one of the only MMOs I know that was planning it.
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
You just described our objective and approach when we did the Followers of Armaggedon story arc in UO a decade ago.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I know backin the day GM's in EQ would do events a couple times a year. Most people would forget about wha the event was about sometimes just so they could kill the GM tho, but they were fun most of the time.
The team at Fallen Earth are great for these, there's a weekly (well, not so weekly lately) trivia night where the head GM (Community Director Tiggs) asks questions for players to win player-donated prizes, and then they have live events like Hillstomper attacks for Halloween and the destruction of Boneclaw, plus live events that were run for the anniversary.
Just this past weekend the Devs and GMs took to the test server to play around with the players and answer questions - they spawned some monsters at the end for everyone to have fun with.
The stated aim seems to be to have one of these events a month if possible, they're always a blast, so I hope they can do this.
Trouble is, it's easier to do this in "smaller" games like FE and Deadfall than in "bigger" games, where you have multiple servers and multiple times the qq-ing from people that miss events because of time-zones and RL.
Such events are great for making players feel like part of the game. I guess if you've played an MMO with these sort of events you'd really miss them not being there, and if you haven't...well then you don't know that you're missing anything.
Trivia nights are some of my favorite nights in Fallen Earth.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Well, I guess it is very costly to have such events, unless the tool used by GMs allow to create a nice event with just one GM.
Also, it should not replace every else which is needed to make a great MMO, but that can add a bit to it too.
What about back in the days, like in DAoC ?
Theres a GM event this weekend in Darkfall Online on the NA server where the GMs will take control of undead monsters and attack racial cities from time to time they have attacked player cities as well.
http://www.darkfallonline.com/blog/dead-be-comin/
It doesn't seem to be very common anymore, atleast not in f2p's.
Any events i've seen the past few years consist of automated/preprogramed mechanics where GM's don't normally have to lift a finger or even be logged in once they begin. There has been the odd (and failed) attempt at mob spawning in towns for players to defend aggainst, but those ended badly since they were locations people like to afk and setup shops lol..
The biggest problem with not having GM controlled events is probably because they are assigned multiple responsibilies, online, offline, and forums, f2p's just don't seem to fork out the pay to have dedicated in-game GM's, they're always more about the behind the scenes management.
Last MMO that Ive witnessed a GM actually initiate a GM event and control a character within the game world(specifically for the event) was Everquest.
It was a lot more common in UO, AC and EQ than the newer games. I don't remember many in DAoC, though.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Back in Vanilla, I saw a GM done up as a huge giant in WoW ripping up players in Org. It was amazing. Never seen it since.
I added GM monster forms to my own work so we can do the same.
This is something that started way back with UO and it was one of the big appeals of it. GM's and event moderators would hold all kind of events in game. Some events had you protecting cities from mob invasions, others had you going out to dungeon crawl. When there was an announcement for the game Garriott would do it in game as Lord British (His in game char). He would call for an assembly in his castle and the town criers would announce it to any passing by them.
3 of the most memorable for me were the Moonglow invasion where players actually had to defend the city from a siege. If the players succeeded on their shard then the city remained on that shard, if they failed it became a demolished city haunted by spirits.
Another was the launching of Stygian Abyss. The GM's and Event moderators took on the roles of chars from the lore to act it out and the players fought in the war which eventually led to the launch of the Stygian Abyss expansion.
My favorite of all though was the whole thing between Lord Blackthorne and Lord British. There was always something going on event wise between the two of them. They were the two lead devs and players got to side with whomever they wanted with most of the events.
All in all it was a blast. I missed those events and am glad seeing some of the newer MMO's copying UO.
Well right, this is the same event that they got on the EU server last week end, and of which I have posted videos...
That was a blast I have been told.
Would be nice to see this more regularly in all the MMOs.
I was there.
Honestly, while UO was by far the closest to "the right kind of game", and could have made it work well enough, the game still lacked the social systems for justice and free flowing factions that would allow for this to really be done right. As always, just my opinion, of course.
Once upon a time....
Yep, UO and AC1 had these type of events long ago.
They were lag fill messes, but man were they fun as hell.
/puts on rose colored glasses.....
I miss the good ole days of gaming.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
yeah its funny when i see post like this talking about how great it would be for this or that and most of those things were in the older games.
just goes to show how dumbed down games are today.
AC 1 GMs back in the day would take boss mobs from epic quest and roll into towns demolishing people. was tons of fun.
Those aren't rose colored glasses, those are glasses of true seeing.
Once upon a time....
http://www.own3d.tv/video/44773/Undead_Raid
^^^ This is that same event in some good race cities ^^^
Every week they have been updating the lore of Agon. There have been several hints of some epic monster rising havoc in the near future. My guess is that it will be another GM-controlled PVE event vs a giagantic daemon giant thingy (sounds like that is what it is from studying the lore, look at the description of the new mobs too for one of the hints as it talks about how they are preparing the world for some epic entity to enter or something like that).
Dynamic quests besides the events have been talked about as well. Something that someone does in game will alter Agon's history but nobody knows about it and many probably think that it is broken but GMs did admit that there were some bugs to work out but it should be working now . ... waiting for anyone to do something specific. I am guessing that it is a treasure map looted from a certain mob, maybe from a certain area, which will lead to the first clue. This is mostly speculation as nobody has figured it out yet but they have stated that there are dynamic quests besides the dynamic events that will be unlocked by players from doing a certain chain of events. Only hint that they have given is to keep up with lore updates which I have been doing and have a pretty good idea of where to start my search (not telling that part since I want to be the one who unlocks something!!).
Has anyone else noticed how amazing the mobs AI can be now? Holy crap I haven't seen as challenging of PVE since the original EQ!! This expansion has been totally under-rated so far. I am having an absolute blast! The other day we came across some of the new mobs but they had been leveled up or something from a previous party and I died almost immediately while trying to res my friend . .. I went back myself and died again (and so did the guy who jumped me since the mobs were super powerful!). When the mobs got us they acted like real people. I have been wondering time and time again since the expansion if GMs are randomly playing as a mob to provide a bigger challenge. I had to go to bed at that point but holy hell, it felt like I needed a couple people at least to assist in retrieving our corpses! So awesome!! I am so sick of the carebear EQ-clones that followed what was once a hardcore immersive game. A buddy of mine told me that some brownie was following him around and went into a city to kill all of the cats LOL and then followed him to a wilderness bank where it jumped him when he went AFK. A few days after that I saw some streaming vid of some new guy talking to the brownie and giving it orders lol and since the GM must have been watching the stream, he could hear every word. Pretty excited to see where all of this is going!
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Right, there is a video about this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4dVB_vpZNM
This guy is just crazy, but if the Darkfall team continues in that direction, I think that Darkfall might eventually be one of best MMO ever.
Riight