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DM Events
lordnumskull
Member Posts: 2
Not sure if this has been brought up before, but something I've always felt would be a a fantastic feature for a MMORPG would be DM-driven events. EQN seems particularly suited to it as well, given how each world will supposedly develop divergent geographies.
The idea would be that each shard / world would have dedicated DMs who script events and maybe take over some central characters / boss as needed. For instance, they might unleash a plague in a forgotten eastern corner and transform it into a plaguland, or an invasion of some type on a city. Perhaps just a social event of some kind (the king's daughter is getting married!). Some of these events might not even get announced and players will simply discover something has happened and have to respond, perhaps with the aid of the community.
I realize from a programmer's point of view that it would require a pretty dedicated set of tools for the DM to use, but would make for some compelling gameplay.
Comments
Old MUD's would have DM invasions, and merchants and just strange weather...whatever they felt like really, I believe UO had them as well this is something that is very very absent in modern MMO's. Occasionally they would take control of a mob just ot make it act weird, not always in a combat way...for instance when your kobold target starts talking to you outside of the standard AI gibberish it can be very funny...and very suprising.
I believe the next great MMO that can justify a subscription will be the one that has such events, because by god if everyone is paying this much to play them hiring a few DM's for each server (or even better a single shard game with a DM for each area) isn't too much to ask in my opinion.
More or less that's what the Interest Team in UO did... EQ had a team that did live events as well (especially on the Legends server or at least I think that was the name of it). However, in the EQ version they had a very limited number than they ran over and over..
In UO you had kind of a tier system in that IGM's aka Interest Game Masters ran official events. Which were the same event on all shards. That's where either an IGM or volunteer Interest Team member would take over the role of various Iconic characters.
Then you had all the volunteers that were either long term event (Seers) or short term (Elders) and Troubadours that helped play extra roles (but we couldn't use any of the Ultima iconic characters for these events).
It can take a lot of people to do it right...
Originally UP had Seer ran events and RP story. They could even bless play made towns shops and stuff with decorative items that players normally had no access too.
The Events and just random RP encounters would be very interesting.
Perhaps on a more micro level.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2009/11/20/star-wars-galaxies-celebrates-over-3-million-player-created-ques/
My only problem with player created quest system is that it is abused by metagamers to create quests that are only used to quickly gain skill/items/cash/points/whatever and not used to tell a story or provide interesting content.
Yeah. I liked those too in Asheron's Call. But other than the odd end of beta event here and there, it's just not done any more.
With all the unemployment these days, couldn't they find a couple of guys for each server to work for cheap running events? Some people would probably even do it just for free game time,
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED