Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
What makes an MMO is it's world.
tixylix
Member UncommonPosts: 1,288
I remember back in the day, exploring the dark scary and harsh world of EverQuest. I wanted to explore, I wanted to stay in that world because it was so well realised and took me out of reality. When I played Star Wars Galaxies for the first time I got put down on Tatooine and I felt like I was in Star Wars, I could explore this open world. You had the atmosphere of all the ships flying above, the sounds of the creatures that had been tied up and the sounds of robots walking by.
My favourite though was World of Warcraft, it so helps when you have an IP that you already love, you know all these locations but now you can explore them yourself. The zone transitions were amazing, just seamlessly walking from Elwynn Forest to Westfall blew me away. I kept wanting to play that game just to see each new zone and having that amazing seamless transition each time. Going to Booty Bay on the boat was so amazing, in games now you'd click on an NPC and be teleported instantly, but in WoW you took a boat ride like EQ and took the journey. The Griffin rides were amazing too, being able to fly overhead of zones you haven't been to yet and just feeling the sheer size of the world, it made it all feel real.
That is what a new MMO has to do to capture me, sadly they all treat the world like it is getting in the way. They end up getting rid of it and before you know it you have something like SWTOR where you all stand in a hub and instantly travel everywhere. What is the point in an MMO Star Wars game then? I wanted to be in that world, instead I feel like I'm in a station where I just travel to barren levels to do a boring tedious quest. It's a weird situation where KOTOR and Skyrim offered a better MMO experience than the actual so called MMOs, you basically play modern MMOs solo these days as well.
MMO doesn't = a crap RPG full of tedious kill 10 rats quests, it = a world.
Comments
Also waiting for the sinister 6 to show up and detail this thread.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
The world doesn't mean shit when we consume playfield X from level 1-20 and playfield Y from level 21-30.
This is yet another reason to abolish the class/level system and create living breathing worlds where every playfield/area/continent/planet is valuable for something other than a short leveling span.
Yours seems to be another rant post.
Additionally, while I respect what "you" think an mmo is, don't think that mmo = "the same for everyone".
Some people don't even care about the world as has been proclaimed numerous times on these forums.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I feel it is a change in the direction of society.
Most people seem to think it is just a waste of time to have to travel around in a game. Most will point out you can still do it if you really want to, but are no longer forced into it.
Most people who played those games were just happy to be playing and were looking for escapism for long periods of time in worlds they either read about, saw in the movies, or saw in other games.
I also believe as you get older you kind of loose that feeling more and more. Even repeating something you originally loved no longer brings the same excitement.
I am enjoying The Witcher 3 right now, I have a much better TV then I did a computer screen, a much more powerful computer, and the game in general is far beyond any game I played in the past. None the less it doesn't bring the same excitement I felt playing a 8 bit Nintendo game like Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, Crystalis, etc. when I was a kid. Sometimes the nostalgia kicks in when I watch and old movie still, but it seems to lessen with each year.
I do like traveling in games and feel it is ingrained into humans. Perhaps it's been removed from the newer generations as a process of evolution and humans having everything mapped out on the earth. The ancient humans were hunter gathers and exploring (not knowing what was around the next corner) is what drove them to all different corners of the earth.
I believe a lot of us used video games as an Outlet for that type of feeling that our ancestors had.
This generation that grew up with GPS and have a full schedule of things to do won't really get it in most cases I believe.
thanks for going off topic to promote your anti-level crap.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
What is it?
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It's not off topic at all. If you consume a piece of the "world" and move on to the next piece, then it's not a world. It's just leveling zones. Even if they're all shiny and seamless, you literally have no need to ever revisit the 1-20 playfield after you're level 90. That, quite fucking simply, isn't a world.
In an MMO World, there would be something for your character to do in every place they go irrespective of their power level.
Get rid of the ancient, moldy, 1970's era Gary Gygax AD&D model and move into the 21'st century where characters should have hundreds of points of definition, and then you can start building worlds instead of leveling zones.
It's still a world. You adventure through it. It's big. It's wide. It's a world.
The need to visit some 10-20 zone to level 10->20 is what gives those parts of the world meaning.
The need to revisit earlier zones isn't what makes something a world.
Both types of world design can be enjoyable. Both are worlds.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Dissszzzz. We needs a sandbox world and not a themepark world.
Yeah, OP, it would be nice to have lots of world to explore. But even the prettiest or biggest world can get boring if the graphic design for each zone remains exactly the same. Variety in terrain, yes. No invisible walls or heights you can't climb, yes. No ocean you can't swim across, yes. Large zones (no zones seems unrealistic to me and bad for maintenance). Unpredictable mobs instead of constant non-stop repetitious mob spawn. Personally I would make a living world where the mobs had life cycles and needed to reproduce to replenish - simulating real life. Chest finds when exploring, yes. I would love to stumble on a hidden chest with a magic sword or enchanted ring. I would love to stumble on a hidden grove with clan of friendly elves or gnomes or dwarves that offered me a gift of friendship if I slept overnight. Not kill a mob rabbit which somehow managed to swallow an entire adventurer thus had an armor set and twelve gold coins in it's gut and proceeded to magically rise from the dead (responed) right next to me five seconds after I claim said articles. Omg stupid. Would it kill the devs to just program skinning the rabbit for hides???
LESS GAME, MORE LIFE SIMULATION !!! TYVM
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
No, what makes an MMO, or any game for that matter, is its gameplay. Nobody wants to see your "amazing game world" if the gameplay sucks. No one is going to stay for very long if the gameplay is lacking.
More than just admiring the virtual environment, you should be playing a game.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
what makes an MMO is being able to travel in a world on a server with other people.
What makes an MMORPG is the same thing but with strong RPG elements these include not only stats for your character but giving them a life outside of how strong they are such as do they tend towards nice or mean acts, manual or tech labor. slack off or work hard
What makes an MMO(RPG) last: The players, simple as that. If the game promotes strong dependency on each other to want to work together and allow everyone to feel like they are contributing to the end goal, then this will work for long periods.
I know for me EQ lasted all the way up until the people left, then the world became just a place and lost all interest, left shortly thereafter. Before this, the world felt new, it felt interesting, and it had a drive all it's own, without the people it had nothing that a single player game wouldn't offer me.
it's kind of the same thing as going to an amusement park with your family/friends, then try to go to that same amusement park alone, then try to go to that same amusement park alone with no-one there at all, you get three different feelings. the last of which feels like an empty place and feels really sad and lonely and a place you probably don't want to be.
The world is a tool, the RPG allows for a hook, the people are what keep you there.
sandbox or theme park, popular or not, doesn't matter, if the people are there and are working together, it will have lasting power.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
What you don't seem to realize is, older MMOs based around this actually did just create worlds. Areas were very much mixed and random with various level content spread around. If you were level 20, you had like 30 different options as to where you could level. Same for basically all level ranges.
Don't blame it on AD&D, blame it on the modern adaptations that revolve around convenience and creating an easier, more streamlined experience for children of all ages.
Only players who can pretend the game is a real world could make use of the game world.
And that means you have to have players who at least give lip service to roleplay, immersion, acting in character and using higher, more contemplative, brain functions.
A lot of people who are coming to MMOs just don't find that fun. They don't go to MMOs to think and to be creative. They go to MMOs to not have to worry about all that stuff. They just want the combat and action fixes, spending their downtime by clicking the /logoff button.
Frankly, I'm with you, OP. I see the value in the vast worlds, the detail and the scope. But that's because I know how to play a game like that and what I can expect from it. But others have different expectations; they want more action and see no use for detail and scope. I don't think these action types are the vast majority, but they are a significant chunk, are very vocal, and comprise most of the core developer talent these days.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
MMO stands for Massively Multiplayer Online
Its about the players, not the world, not the quest, not the weapons, not a thing but the players.
Now add an RPG after MMO and you have your standard Fantasy genre usually.. not always but usually. Add FPS and you have an MMOFPS like Destiny and such.
It doesnt matter what you add to the end. When the first three letters are MMO its all about the Community of players online all playing the same game together.
You want to talk about worlds well, theres really nothing to say about them because only one game has a world worth mentioning and thats Citadel of Sorcery.. the rest are just tiny maps on a tiny server shard that your pea sized avatar runs around in circles on.
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
Nice post OP.
"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
Yep. The character should fit into the world, not the world around the character. What I mean is that when the map and content are formed fit to perfectly progress along set lines the need for said world is removed. May as well read a book because that is all that's going on, an interactive, prewritten story. Many may like that and that's cool but I want my own story and a lot of the current MMOs don't offer that and those that do, like AA, have issues.
Oh well, I have hope for the future!
Edit: I see the contradiction with AA and some linear questing but overall it does provide many more freedom of gameplay options to counteract it.
Sorry Sir, but what makes an MMO is the networking layer, at least how the term is used today.
A long time ago MMO meant exactly the same thing as MMORPG. It meant UO and EverQuest and all the things about them. But not anymore.
As I understand it. MMO started off as an abbreviation for MMORPG, used by people who didn't want to use a six letter acronym. But then other games came out that weren't MMORPGs and they (or their players) used the term MMO as the name of the genre of the game.
I don't know where it started, but MMOFPS was one of these.
Now, as some (perhaps many) people use the term today, everything from World of Tanks, to YoVille, to MOBAs, to WoW are all MMOs. Why? They are networked online games. That's all it means to these people.
Good luck on changing that. They think they're right and you are wrong.
EDIT: On the subject of the rant. If you add WORLD + PLAYERS, I strongly agree (although if you're talking about MMORPGs I suggest the term MMORPG). However, the emphasis on GAME has lowered the emphasis on WORLD + PLAYERS.
Why has this happened? I think the answer is easy. There are more people looking for GAME than there are people looking for WORLD + PLAYERS, and the developers shift emphasis to make more money.
I really really like everything I've read about their game engine, world building, NPC interactions and questing. I really want to try this game.
I feel, however, that they've made two unfortunate decisions regarding the game:
1) They have picked the most horribly cliched name I can imagine. They might as well have named their game Shadow of Darkness, or even better XxXShadow_of_DarknessXxX.
Citadel of Sorcery sounds like some cheap mobile game where I would play tower defense with a Wizard. Good God they need to change that name to something less bland. Not only that, but it evokes the wrong imagery in peoples minds. When I hear that title I think of a single building full of Wizards. I'm not thinking of a huge procedurally generated planet full of countless things to do and nearly unlimited character progression.
2) The races are very unfortunate. I'm not saying that they need to use the Tolkien standard of Dwarves, Elves and Orcs, but most of their proposed races are either extremely bland or way too far off of the beaten path. If they stick with the portraits that they have now, then I can see the majority of players sticking with human.
Lets see, my choices are gross green people with moss growing off of their faces, some short people with ears that would make an elephant jealous, a flat faced, bluish aquatic race that are barely decent enough to be background aliens in a Star Trek movie or yet another cat person. Ok ok, fox person. Might as well be cats.
It's almost as if they have a team of brilliant programmers, lead by a brilliant programmer, and no one with a good sense of creativity.
All of that being said, this is definitely my idea of an MMO World rather than just a few leveling zones strung together with endless boring fetch quests.
I agree wholeheartedly. The seamless transition of zones seems to be a lost art...
Like you say, flying over a new zone on the Gryphon in WoW was something special. Mousing over all those new mobs as fly overhead to see what you're gonna be up against.
Rift did the open world thing well too..
I know that feeling not many mmo today have it but ESO have a amazing zone "worlds" if you take your time and rid in zones instead using wayshries you will see a wonderful zone to bad the when you enter/leave zones you get loading screens which in way really destroy game world.
And those who say that world dont mean jackshit the are no truely rpg gamers for a true rpg gamers the storyline and world is most import for just look at The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt or Dragon Age: Inquisition those game are both wonderful to be in for that wonderful work the have done with world and that really good to play as well for the stroylines are really well write without those 2 import ingredient no one would play those this 2 are just example of game that world is importen to make the player feel that the are part of game.