There is actually a great post I'll dig up on why mmos and perhaps mostly themepark mmos have gone the route you describe above... basically, Sandboxes will polarise attitudes: Love it or hate it while themeparks that are v guided to appeal to as many as possible will sell better... I'll edit and dig up the post that explains the logic why developers tend towards this design.
But it's great that MMOs are getting more emotion, gestures, voice-overs, drama, story arc, character development and combination with lore in such detail and direction?!
I have an idea already why this is the case. It's because real RPGs only appeal to a small group of players, whereas that's not interesting for game companies from a business prospective.
Bioware for example has been going the route of making their RPGs more and more movie-like. This appeals to more people, but it doesn't appeal so much to many an RPG-player because it's not what they're really looking for. I make my comments based on criticism I've seen by players about DA:O, DA2, ME2 especially. Though there are favorable opinions for those games of course, my feelings about DA:O in particular coincide with what the 'old skool' RPG-players tend to think about the DA series.
To me an RPG-player is someone who loves the genre and will have played many of these games and will continue to buy this genre of game, whether it's single player or an MMOG. I'm an example of an RPG-player. I still have some of the old AD&D games from the late 80s like Pools of Darkness, I have BG1/2, Torment, DA:O, Divine Divinity, and more MMOs than I would care to post here heh.
There is a growing lack of polished RPGs coming out that cater to RPG-players and more and more of these hand-held, movie games coming out from the studios with big bucks. We have to look to small, usually European indie studios for the more traditional games.
I've been playing RPGs since the 80s, and massively multiplayer games since the 90s. In 1994, text-based MUDs were completely arcane for the average person, not least because you had to know UNIX and how to macro in order to play them at all, plus you had to have an internet connection which was rather rare in those days. The genre was too inaccessible. Come UO's release and then EQ1's, these games were finally in a format that could be enjoyed by anyone with an ok computer and a decent internet connection. The only problem is that they still seemed pretty arcane to most people, for whatever reason.
With the third generation of MMOs (WoW, AoC, WAR, etc), they've finally become mainstream but the downside is that in my opinion they're becoming less and less of an RPG and more and more... well... something else. It's not that this is a horribly bad thing, it's just that it does not cater to RPG-players.
I agree that a force-fed personalized story doesn't really cut it. A personalized story should be made personal by the experience a player makes for himself in a game. If the devs remove all chance of doing that, it kills the game for me since the game becomes a slightly interactive movie with little replay value and therefore low longetivity.
That's it, this post on Market Segmentation is illustrative of trying to cater to a larger market share which in turn may reduce the average quality felt per person who buy and plays the mmo.
Imagine 5 users and two ways to design your game: Option A and Option B.
I use a scale of 1-10.
10 means a player loves your game. 1 means he hates it.
All users buy a game if they give it at least a rating of 5/10.
All users pay the same price when they buy the game.
"User benefit" on a scale 1-10 of different users depending on design option:
Option: A | B
----------------
User 1: 9 | 5
User 2: 8 | 5
User 3: 9 | 5
User 4: 2 | 5
User 5: 1 | 5
----------------
Sum : 29 | 25
Total benefit
Option A: 9+8+9+2+1=29
Option B: 5+5+5+5+5=25
To maximize aggregate user benefit you would have to chose option A, but at option B you sell the game 5 times. At option A you only sell it 3 times. Substract costs, and your profit at option B is much, much higher than at option A. [...]
Player 1-3 would absolutely love a game developed according to option A - they will never get it.
In themepark mmos the natural improvement will be to add greater details from the designers vision of the story with the illusion of choice for players by branching stories. Tbh this is at least an improvement on one global story for everyone treated the same doing the same quests, so I don't dislike it. I think ME2 was a great game. The only catch I would never play it more than once.
MMOs adding quality writing with more reference to the lore that at least "tries to talk you into being in another world" even if the world interactions themselves fall short! But less guided and more chaotic worlds would be another large step forward for story in mmos, to my mind. I think Tor and GW2 will feel very hand-holding but they will be quality stories from the developers which at least they can add to the experience overall and appeal in particular to Narrative-driven player types and not just Results-driven player types who enjoy grind in mmos.
Storytelling games have a high failure rate, IMO. They come and flop. Only WOW and a handful of sandbox titles have stood the test of time, and that tells me "world", not "story", is what makes for a great MMO.
Sorry, but themepark MMO's have still done better than sandbox MMO's, the only sandbox MMO that did well is EVE Online.
Storytelling MMO's haven't really been around, what you probably meant is themepark MMO's with questing as main leveling mechanism.
And the trend goes like this:
- first mob grinding was the most important leveling mechanism. People got bored with it and started complaining.
- then with WoW questing became the main leveling means. After a number of happy years people started to get bored with it and start complaining.
So, now there's room for a new change, something that will replace traditional questing as leveling means. And we'll see the new MMO's try things out:
- Rift has rifts as alternate leveling means
- GW2 will have Dynamic Events and storytelling quests as leveling means
- SWTOR will have storytelling quests and dungeons as leveling means
- TSW will have storytelling quests and puzzle/mystery quests and ARG's as progression means
What people will like best, time will tell, but it sure is a break from traditional questing.
Of course, that covers only the leveling part and the first 150-250 hours of someone's MMO experience. For the longterm retention it all depends upon how an MMORPG will be after that period of time, what it will offer as entertainment then.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Comments
That's it, this post on Market Segmentation is illustrative of trying to cater to a larger market share which in turn may reduce the average quality felt per person who buy and plays the mmo.
In themepark mmos the natural improvement will be to add greater details from the designers vision of the story with the illusion of choice for players by branching stories. Tbh this is at least an improvement on one global story for everyone treated the same doing the same quests, so I don't dislike it. I think ME2 was a great game. The only catch I would never play it more than once.
MMOs adding quality writing with more reference to the lore that at least "tries to talk you into being in another world" even if the world interactions themselves fall short!
But less guided and more chaotic worlds would be another large step forward for story in mmos, to my mind. I think Tor and GW2 will feel very hand-holding but they will be quality stories from the developers which at least they can add to the experience overall and appeal in particular to Narrative-driven player types and not just Results-driven player types who enjoy grind in mmos.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Sorry, but themepark MMO's have still done better than sandbox MMO's, the only sandbox MMO that did well is EVE Online.
Storytelling MMO's haven't really been around, what you probably meant is themepark MMO's with questing as main leveling mechanism.
And the trend goes like this:
- first mob grinding was the most important leveling mechanism. People got bored with it and started complaining.
- then with WoW questing became the main leveling means. After a number of happy years people started to get bored with it and start complaining.
So, now there's room for a new change, something that will replace traditional questing as leveling means. And we'll see the new MMO's try things out:
- Rift has rifts as alternate leveling means
- GW2 will have Dynamic Events and storytelling quests as leveling means
- SWTOR will have storytelling quests and dungeons as leveling means
- TSW will have storytelling quests and puzzle/mystery quests and ARG's as progression means
What people will like best, time will tell, but it sure is a break from traditional questing.
Of course, that covers only the leveling part and the first 150-250 hours of someone's MMO experience. For the longterm retention it all depends upon how an MMORPG will be after that period of time, what it will offer as entertainment then.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."