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World or Game?
TheFarseer
Member Posts: 97
WoW is a good game (yes, I know you're going to argue with this, and it might not be true, but for the purposes of the argument STFU and let's pretend it is). It has addictive quality going way off the scale of "crack" into the realms of "moon sugar" and "skooma". The game encounters are well designed, it plays smoothly and everything "snaps" together quite well.
What WoW is not is a world. This is what you're yearning for when you say you want a "sandbox game". You want a world with rules and regulations that you have to abide by, a world where you're not always the hero, a world which isn't broken up by instances and other ridiculousness that forces you to suspend disbelief. ( I could rant on and on about not calling this game an MMORPG, but an MMOW, but let's get to the point. :P )
What do you all want? Do you want a game where you're constantly a hero, who's systems bend to your will and which makes you into Carbon Copy #323452? Or do you want an online world where you're not a hero? Where you're just a normal person who can rise up and take the crown of lord or king? A world which challenges you, and you have to force it to submit to your control?
Which do you want, MMORPG.com: World or game? You cannot truly have both.
Comments
I was going to post a thread practically identical to this, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so. I've, unfortunately, yet to play a game that even tries to resemble a world and not a conveyer belt.
One aspect of a world-like MMO I find very important, yet no MMO seems to pull off anymore, is a sense of wonder and the unknown. Or that the world and its inhabitants are really alive and breathing behind those NPC faces. It's easy to break the illusion when Bob the Blacksmith is always at his anvil night and day, 24/7, FOREVER since the dawn of the server, selling the same wares at the same prices and giving away the same quests.
I'm having a little trouble with your definition. WoW is a world with rules and regulations that you have to abide by. WoW is a world where you're not always the hero. And the only ridiculousness in your third qualification is the thought that instancing forces you to stop suspending your disbelief.
WoW isn't my cup of tea but I recognize that its addiction and popularity is due to the fact that they did a great job building a world. It's not possible to put a grind in a total vacuum and get millions of people to do it. There has to be a context; there has to be a reason that those virtual achievements seem valuable enough to justify thousands of hours of work to accomplish them.
Perhaps where we differ is that I'm including other players as part of the world. Okay, maybe any NPC that I walk up to calls me the world's savior, but to everyone else in the game there's nothing extraordinary about me. If I wanted to make a name for myself and be famous or notorious, I'd have to try incredibly hard to stand out.
What one person personal preference on this forum is irrelevant.
The market has been saying 'WoW type over Sandbox type' for the past 6 years.
Even if we take out the sub number king WoW, Aion and the like is more commercially successful than Sandbox games.
Capitalism/free-market at work.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Make a world and ppl will find a place. Make a ride and ppl will eat too much candy and feel sick on the rides after a while...
Definitely think world simulations could be done with a new concept etc.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
So you're saying the NPCs singing you their constant praises makes you "not the hero"? I think someone needs to understand storytelling a little better.
Instancing is a major factor of suspension of disbelief. "Oh, look, we are the only party of five people to clear this dungeon, are we not special?"
WoW is roughly equivalent to an arcade game. You follow the path (the questing line in WoW, the level in the arcade game), get loots and then fight a big boss at the end of it all. This is why it's not a world. All it is is following this lovely straight line.
In a world, you're expected to just do. You don't get NPCs going, "OH GREAT ORC PLEASE KILL LORD PYRAXIUS" or anything along those lines. If Lord Pyraxius is causing you trouble, go and kill him. Otherwise go and hunt werewolves or craft or whatever.
{mod edit}
I think the issue is that you don't really understand what I mean by "world". You think it's just some crappy fluff thrown together by Metzen, whereas I mean an actual world. Something that lives and breathes and CAN be shaped by your actions, if you have a big enough lever and enough leverage.
Exactly. I want to be able to ride out and break the orc tribes, but I want to not see it again. I want to craft armour and equip a legion of newbie soldiers to fight PKers, not to have those PKers get up again with no losses and do no real harm. I want to see my (and everyone else's) actions have consequences on the world, instead of just "lol nothing happened".
I think the main issue is that many of the new sandboxes coming out are in sucky settings, like post apocalypse and futuristic. I just want a good fantasy sandbox. Why is that so hard?
Game or world, game or world. Do I want to be forced into endless replaying of killing bosses and slautering rats. Again and again and again. Forced into pve when I dont enjoy it.
Or world, where I can choose to craft and become rich. Or become a renoewned architect. or a notorius murderer. Be able to progress how I want to. When I want to.
The problem with games is they're frustrating boring pieces of sloth $#!(.
The problem with worlds is that they are badly built, grief laden, pvp ridden pieces of frustrating, annoying, rabies covered $#!(.
Combine the AAA resources given to games with a well designed world and I'd pick worlds. Keep worlds as they are and I say they are both junk.
It's a little strange that you mention storytelling and instancing back to back. After all, "instancing" is an important element of storytelling. Stories—whether you're talking about novels, movies, TV shows, or games—tend to focus on a cast of major and minor characters and ignore everyone who is not part of that cast. People who aren't important to the story aren't present or aren't described in detail. If the hero goes to the top of the building to break in from the roof, nobody's going to be sunbathing up there unless the plot requires that someone sees what he's doing or forces him to find another way in. The author wouldn't put some nobody up there for no reason, just because realistically someone could be there. It is poor storytelling, a waste of words and/or screentime.
An instance in an MMO is just a way of removing that which does not contribute to the story. This same trick is done in every medium and it's not an unacceptable break from reality.
A couple of years ago, some WoW player(s) realized that deriving a single value to describe another character's gear would allow you to quickly assess how prepared they were for a certain challenge. The player(s) went on to create an add-on called Gearscore. Now, whether they use the add-on or not, there is nobody doing WoW raids who doesn't know what Gearscore is and hasn't been affected by its existance. Would you call that a world being shaped by someone's actions?
I think the issue is that you don't really understand what I mean by "world". You seem to be talking about in-game text like NPC dialogue. This matters a lot for single-player games, not so much for theme park MMOs, and even less for sandbox games.
{mod edit}
Whether the market 'loves' it or 'hate' it is not relevant either. What's important is 'will the market buy it?' This is kinda (ie very) important since companies like to make money to pay their employees/shareholders.
I stated a fact that 'WoW like MMOs are commercially more success than sandbox type MMOs' for the past 6 years. If you want to dispute that, go ahead but cite some sources if you do, cause my stance is accepted as fact by many people.
Niche exists and they are successful (EVE, DF) but they aren't as commercially successful as WoW like MMOs.
In essence what you personally prefer doesn't seem to be shared by the vast majority of people that play MMOs, so don't be dissappointed if the market doesn't meet your personal demand.
{mod edit}
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Untrue and reaching at the least. Big publishers are the only ones with the money to be able to come close to releasing a quality game that works. Publishers want low risk and high return. Most gamers do not enjoy playing out dated buggy games even if they are catering to what they really want, so therefore your free market/capitalism BS has been limiting the genre, and by no means does revenue dictate a comnsensus on what gamers want in the game, more than it dictates that they want a game to work and meet certain standards as far as quality is concerned.
Not that I dont like free markets, but in this case ahhhhnt
To the caterpillar it is the end of the world, to the master, it is a butterfly.
What a person 'wants' is actually irrelevant since it isn't always what a person will 'buy'. If you want certain things than the best message you can send to these 'big publishers' is to support a game that has the features you want.
'Speak with your wallet'.
You'd think with this many 'we want world/sandbox' type posts that the MMOs with those features will be more commercially successful but they aren't. The reasoning why that is and whether it is right or wrong doesn't matter, that's market reality.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Maybe I should clarify the difference between world an game. Just so everybodies on the same page.
world basicly means a simulation of liefe within a game. take uo for example you can own property, open a business [ie be a crafter], be a thief, etc.
with certain things supporting this like a player based economy, or player factions going to war, etc.
a game is a simulation of a linear storyline. crafting is in support of progression. You get most items off of mob drops and vendors and not through an open player based economy. instead of choosing to become a trader you are forced into a combat role in order to finish the questline or run dungeons. Pvp is basicly a fps put into a mmo.
to put it simply [please note by "role" I mean crafter, explorer, etc. NOT. I repeat NOT dps, tank, etc.]
world = do what you want to do without being forced into a role. Instead taht role is chosen by the player.
game: being forced into a role deetrmined by the game designers.
In its simplesest form.
world: freedom
game: slavery
Both...
For example, in DaoC i could either be a normal soldier, or I could rise up and be the "leader" of entire armies, yet i don't consider it a "sandbox" at all.
DaoC snapped together very well, in my opinion, everything was laid out quite well, depending on what you wanted to do at the time...
I voted "Can't I have both?" because the answer is yes. If someone invents a World Simulator it's not going to destroy WoW. WoW, a game, will still be there. Therefore both exist. So I can play both. Haha.
Always read the small print.
I think the problem here is that this whole thread is based off of a faulty definition of 'game'. Game already has a definition, all its own.
Loosely speaking, it's something you do for fun (Either your own, or for the fun of others, like a sports game), that has rules.
These 'worlds' you speak of have to have rules, if you want to be able to play them. For example of a sim without rules, look at Second Life. People can do nigh-unto-anything in there. Want to drop a nuke on somebody's head? Go ahead! You can do it. Want to turn into a pumpkin? Cool, you can do that too. When there's no rules, you can do anything, and because everybody else can do anything, you can't really affect somebody unless they choose to be affected.
It's like a bunch of almighty gods hanging out. It makes for a very poor game, or more accurately, a complete lack of game.
It's not until you impose rules that a game appears, which allows people to play it and have fun in a structured fashion. I know, I know... I can hear people rising up and screaming 'structure is bad! All guidance... BAD. The more freedom, the better!'. So people should be able to choose to be a god? Should they be able to create giant flying penis monsters, and go riding around on them while playing the hamster dance at full volume?
Perhaps you should rethink your stance on whether or not rules are good.
There is not a single 'world' MMORPG that has even the smallest fraction of the amount of freedom you have in a P&P RPG, yet those are still games (Note the word 'game' in Role Playing Game). With an obliging enough dungeonmaster, you can create anything, go anywhere, talk with anybody about anything, do anything within the capabilities of your character. That is why it is a game. There are rules imposed upon everybody's characters, and the world.
In fact, I would say that one problem with many world-style MMORPGs is that they're not very good games (Actually, that's a problem with MMORPGs in general in my opinion, but I digress). Would it really kill EVE if it was a little bit less like a spreadsheet?
In fact, this may seem paradoxical, but in order to create more freedom in an MMORPG, you need more rules. The more rules you have, the more freedom you have. That's because games can't improvise. If EVE had rules for running aroun don planets, and rules for tea making, and rules for designing spaceship interiors, suddenly you'd be able to run around in your spaceship drinking tea, and go down to planets to party with other gentlemen and ladies who are also drinking tea.
Rules can be used to bind, but the ONLY way to create more freedom in MMOs is with more rules. If combat has no rules, it's not a game, it's just two people yelling 'I win' 'No, I win!' at each other until somebody gives up, gets bored, and goes home.
So creating more and better rules creates better games, which is needed to create better worlds. Sure, you can use the rules to make a game completely linear, but you need those same rules (In a different way) if you want to create an illusion of choice (Because no matter what you do in a game 'world', it's still all choices that the computer gives you.)
And then you get to do the story all over again. Whilst being an unimportant minor character.
In a MMOW, players write the story.
In a game, the story writes the player.
Simple enough?
Are you really suggesting that a game's world is the fact people used a third-party addon to measure another player's progress? To me, it seems more like a meter used to measure how good a person is at an arcade game. Or at least how far along they are. "Your level progress (gearscore) is 30! You are AT LEVEL THIRTY. Now carry on down this linear path!"
Anyway, feel free to tell me how it has changed the game's world? Tell me how a player made Thrall step down as Warchief or how they killed the Lich King or anything like that. They have changed nothing, and that's the major issue with instances. It changes nothing in the game.
You're being purposefully obfuscating and using ridiculous logic in order to prove WoW is not a "game" but a "world". We both know you're talking shit.
I'm sure most MMORPGers are smart enough to know it, too.
WOW! Are we getting into this debate again? Do I need to pull out my charts on the growth of WoW and how growth has slowed as the world has got less and less open again? Do I need to devastate you in such a way that the only way you can strike back is reporting my posts, AGAIN?
The only commercially successful (in the West) WoW-like MMO is WoW. It's that simple, really. I'm fairly certain EvE Online has more subscribers than SWG, WAR and AoC combined. WoW has filled the WoW-like MMO niche and no competitors will really be able to force themselves in.
The fact this will not penetrate your skull is fantastic, though.
(If you reply, I will drag out my lovely graphs again and you will report me and I will laugh. It'd be better for you to bow out now.)
I think you got confused on what I posted.
I think you're confused on what you posted.
The title of the thread is 'world vs. game'.
My point is that a good world IS a good game, and your snarky comment about 'can't have game and world both' is totally, completely, 100% wrong.
Unless it's a book.
Are you advocating books vs. games? Sorry, I was confused, if that's the case.
You said a good world cannot be a good game, and if you mean that in the sense of 'The moment The lord of the Rings became a game, it became not a good world, and it should have stayed a book'.
In which case you wrote your OP very poorly, because that doesn't sound like what you said.
WoW used to be a world. Nowdays it has devolved into something else entirely. A lobby game where 10 million + people log in and stand by the auction house just to queue up for an instance? They could get rid of the "world" completly and I don't think anyone would really care much. And some people wouldn't even know the world has vanished because they never leave the city (auction house) anyways. Thank god we have RIFT now and hopefully it doesn't go down the same path that WoW has taken. At least for a long time. I fail to see how in the hell WoW has managed to retain it's subscribers. Has the gaming youth/community truly came to this? Mainly brainless people who have no imagination anymore? Or perhaps todays society has prevented people from having enough free time to truly explore a world anymore?
I'm not saying a good world cannot be a good game, I'm saying things that decide to be games cannot be good worlds.
WoW is a good game because it leads the player by the hand, this is a massively important part of game design so that players don't get "lost" or "run off and get confused". It has solid rule systems, has very little realism etc etc. It is a solid game because of this.
Worlds are not good games because they will not lead the player by the hand. They thrust him out into a cold and unforgiving ocean and tell him to find land or he'll drown. They do not guide the player along to make sure he gets lots, they do not care how harsh their game systems are and they couldn't care less about the woes of an individual player.
This makes it a bad game.
Do you understand?
Hard game >< bad game.
Just because a game is hard, or harsh and unforgiving, or doesn't hold your hand, doesn't mean it's bad, it just means it's difficult.
It means it's a different TYPE of game. Candyland is not a better game than Risk because it's more friendly towards babies.
Checkers is not a better game than Chess.
If you die because of things within the world rules, then that's just part of the game. If you die because you drop between two polygons and fall to your death, that's a badly programmed game.
If you die and it's completely arbitrary, and nothing you do makes a difference or can make a difference, then yeah, I gues that would be a bad game, because player choice makes 0 difference. :P That's more like playing the lotto.
Ohh, you are so correct when you imply that the only vote that matters is your wallet. However there is another variable that determines the initial compulsory reaction, and that is marketing. Everyone can clearly see that the trend in video game marketing has been borderline false advertising. Still, we are to blame for thinking this one will be different.
The free market works just like freedom. In small amounts it is just what the doctor ordered, but as the dynamics exponentially reiterate, you wind up with eddy currents that trap and consume the spirit of once was. Perfect example is the grand ole country that we all know and love, America, where mega corporations are becoming a dominant force in our society and eliminating the community spirit.
Sorry, off track.
This is relevant to this discussion because it seems as if this same dynamic is causing a "WOW" eddy current in the mmorpg dynamic. The only way to overcome that is to opt out, however, most of us, just want a game that satisfies our desires (when it comes to gaming). If your like me, you just want a glimpse of the excitement that you had long ago, not because the games were better back then, but because we were younger, and everything seemed more facsinating. Its like a drug, the older we get, the more it has to do, to semm fascinating to us. However, there is a large part of the market that is young and bewildered, and this is what is feeding the "WOW" eddy. lol
To the caterpillar it is the end of the world, to the master, it is a butterfly.
In terms of game design: Game that does not reward the player constantly = Bad game. You can argue against it all you like, but this game is unlikely to make as much profit etc etc and is therefore considered "bad".
Oh, and we're talking about board games, now? I thought we were talking about MMOs, if we're talking about board games, I have to apologise because this is all irrelevant.
I don't agree with WOW not being 'a world'.
It might not have so many sandbox features but it does an awful lot right in world design: zones feel natural, open and the world is consistent and divided over two factions + adds a load of neutral towns in a realistic way. In my eyes much richer, better and immersive than all the artificial world design / layout / mechanics we've seen in games like in AoC or WAR. At least that has been my experience (haven't played WOW in years though).
My brand new bloggity blog.
Trust me when I say WoW is now completely different to vanilla. It is nothing like the image you have in your mind.
EvE is all-around considered a good game. It's won many many rewards. It's not a game for everyone but even those that don't like it generally do agree that it's a well-made game. EvE is also not a game that constantly rewards players. It can take months to train up for a new class of ship and have all the skills needed to T2 fit it. CCP is a major player in the MMO industry. They may not be as big as Blizzard but you can be certain that every experienced MMO player has heard of CCP and that the entire industry takes notice when they start a new project.
If we're talking about MMOs then I'd say the following goes: Not all games are worlds but all worlds are games. If an MMO world isn't recognisable as a game then it's simply horribly designed. A world just means there's more once you get past the game mechanics. If an MMO doesn't have any game mechanics then it's simply a virtual chat box. Of course not all game mechanics aid in creating the sense of a world. You have to design your game with the right mechanics to support the world the game is representing.
We are the bunny.
Resistance is futile.
''/\/\'''''/\/\''''''/\/\
( o.o) ( o.o) ( o.o)
(")("),,(")("),(")(")
A world, of course. That's exactly why I started playing WoW (my first mmo) when it launched. I wanted to experience the "world version" of the Warcraft RTS games that I had enjoyed so much.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb