Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
General: Editorial: RPG in MMO?
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Cari Davidson pens this new editorial on MMORPG.com. Today she asks "where is the RPG in the MMORPG?" Cari is among the newest crop of writers.
| If you are reading this article, youre probably familiar with the term MMORPG. The MMO part, Massively Multiplayer Online was coined somewhere to describe games like EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Eve-Online, and City of Heroes. At any given time, there could be hundreds, or even thousands, of players online simultaneously. I suppose thats what makes the multiplayer part massive. I can accept that. Then theres the RPG Role Playing Game part of the acronym. When I think of an RPG, I think of Dungeons and Dragons. The Dungeon Master always tells a story and brings the character on an adventure, the kind of adventure that inspires poetry, and somehow they involve YOU and make you feel as though you have just personally saved kingdoms and planets alike! When was the last time you remember an MMORPG making you feel like that? Is there something about it being multiplayer that detracts from the story?
By focusing on creating an entertaining story with good character development, computer-based RPGs like Baldurs Gate, Wing Commander ( am I dating myself here?), Ultima, and Morrowind managed to keep me out of the sun for weeks at a time. Its like a choose-your-own-adventure book, where you are the hero or perhaps the villain, but in either case, the story is told, and in the end, it is about you. You grow, gain experience and power, and maybe even find a love interest along the way. Finally, you confront your greatest challenge and emerge victorious! And they lived happily ever after. |
You can read more here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
Anyway, I have never played Dungeons and Dragons, or any other table-tops. I have played a fair number of fun RPGs, though. (KOTOR was my first.) The stories, for the most part, have been truely amazing. I stayed away from RPGs for the longest time because I thought they were all about rolling and numbers and... boring stuff like that. The stories were so gripping, so compelling, that it made the math stuff extremely interesting.
MMORPGs, however, seem to remove the story and leave the number stuff. I can't lie, it's still a little fun to be a superhero and fight all kinds of bad guys. But the story is the main thing, and it's not there in any significant way. I totally agree with the author of this article, they need to focus their attention in this area.
Now, there is a game. A massively multiplayer online game. That was built to tell a story. From the ground up, they started with the story, then designed the whole concept of the gameplay. Not a classic RPG by any stretch of the imagination. No fighting. No leveling. Nothing like that.
I'm talking about URU, from Cyan Worlds. Anybody ever play Myst? The game was pulled before it went live back in 2003, but it's coming back at the end of this year on GameTap. I played the single-player version, several times. It definitely tells a story. It is a story. All the game is is exploring to find out the story. And, of course, they always intended for the players to actively control the story through their choices. In Cyan's minds, the whole point of it being a MMO is so they can continually update the story content, releasing new places to explore. Wondrous new worlds.
I guess a game like that doesn't fit into a Dungeons and Dragons website like this one. It's more of a MMOAG (AG=Adventure Game). *Sigh* Well, I'm gonna play it, at any rate!
I must confess, though. If City of Heroes buckled down and made their game more cinematic and epic, story-wise, I'd stick with it forever.
Personally, I agree 100% with the editorial. I think there is a lot missing from the RPG aspect in the game. However, part (if not most) of this falls on the shoulders of the players when the game doesn't provide enough backstory to develop an immersion level for the game. Here is where the REAL problem lies. So many games, particularly World of Warcraft, are full of foul-mouthed children. These people have no interest, and likely never will. But THESE are the people many games target. Kids with their mommy and daddy's credit card, and parent who don't care what they're doing so long as it's not shooting people in real life. A majority of the players simply have no interest in roleplaying. Just look at the servers in WoW. You will see that only a small part of them are RP servers, and those servers don't even contain a lot of RP.
It seems that in order to have a game with a high level of roleplay, it almost needs to be a niche game. The "popular" games (again I use WoW as the main example), especially those with PvP, mostly draw in immature players who think roleplaying is "g4y". They call people who don't participate in open pvp0 and "gank"-fests "carebears" and enjoy the role of mocking other players and showing just how "1337" they are...
I do agree that a game with a high level of RP-friendly features would draw in a lot of the more mature crowd, but it would also drive away a lot of the kiddies and therefor a great amount of money the game could be making. So would any developer WANT to make a game that has RP immersion when they can just follow the crowd and use the same cookie-cutter mold as every other game in the genre?
Excellent article and I agree fully with it.
I really loved to play through Star Wars Old Republic 1-2 and Jade Empire, a story is very important to an rpg.
Funcom is trying to create a story for characters with Age of Conan, one gets to play the first 20 levels offline as a single player game.
I think the reason why there is no RPG in MMORPG's anymore is because:
A) It's been clearly shown that you don't need to go through the effort of adding in the 'RPG' into an MMORPG to have a successful game as far as revenue goes.
Long story short, there's no money in 'RPG' or there's easier money in the cheap grind.
Just that one feature right there would make a huge difference, as long as it's designed into the game from the very start and every game feature is consciously developed to support it. Merely tacking on "Epic Story, Chapter III" as an afterthought won't do.
Once players start asking, "What's the point? Why am I doing this?" you've lost them.
--Flatfingers
After read that editorial, I kind of agree with it. Most MMORPGs don't tend to have a story. Yet, when the game does, most people don't tend to pay attention to it. And besides, RPGs aren't just stories. Okay, they mostly are, but still think of the RPG factors. Like HP, MP, leveling, magic, fantasy, and some others. Think of the story as just a little edition to the game.
--------------------------------
If companies would add in more tools for players to use, the RP minority would grow like mad. Simple things like Taverns that have games, fluff like the option to drop your adventuring and become a farmer, public bulletin boards in game that players can post on, possibly create their own quests (See the guys over at Nevrax I think it is, Saga of Ryzoms Quest toolkit will have DM options), more fleshed out npc ai's in towns, options for a player to hold meaningful jobs in cities (Crafter bob goes to work as an apprentice blacksmith in a town, then gets his own forge there), maybe some player ran newspaper, where the players get to write two short articles and then the other stories are about NPC and player progression in their jobs.
The atmosphere is just not there in towns in mmorpgs now, more like some robotic vending machines that might require you to pay in rat tails. Add fluff to the games to give roleplayers more wacky things to do, make thier choices impact the world even if its just news about Crafter Bob or about Rogue Joe getting snatched by Hankville guards for swiping a biscuit.. More Fluff will bring Roleplaying back into the games, just my humble opinion.
I completely agree, there are lots of MMO's out there that have a thin story to it, or a hidden story. I know when I played WoW and went to Scarlet Monastery for the first time, I wanted to read all the books in there, since they had so much history and knowledge of the game, and yet I couldn't enjoy it, because my group wanted to move on as fast it could through the monastery.
The one game that made me feel like a part of the story was Final Fantasy XI, because most of the main quest had cutscenes that involved you and your group in it, of course as was stated by an earlier post, a good number of people skip the scene, and when you're the only one in your group watching the cutscene it tends to feel like you're holding your group back.
I think the basic break down is in expectations of the player. In the old CRPG's (I played Wing Commander, and Bards Tale before that), the player did not have to have any RPG skills at all, the game created a linear path and the player pushed the buttons like a rat getting feed pellets to progress the story. It wasn't until Daggerfall that any game at all had any form of non-linearity.
RPG has nothing to do with the game and everything to do with the character. I've played D&D/PnP games since '76 and I can tell you with the utmost of sincerity that it is possible to sit in the most organic of gaming situations, playing D&D with dice and character sheets, and NOT role play. The GM can be the greatest ever, with an amazingly engaging story, plot hooks, etc and the players can be slash-and-hack dorks that talk about their favorite sports teams and guns while butchering the poor GM's content.
Conversely, you can take the most sterile RP environment imaginable (I like to use Counterstrike), grab 5 guys who love to RP, and they can turn it into an amazing RPG experience, where they remain in-character the entire night, hours on end, no matter what any other players in the game might say or do.
RPG is always in the hands of the players, which is why the game designers dropped it from the acronym...they don't provide RPG's, they provide game environments that people can RP in or not. I've had amazing RP experiences on non-RP servers, and wretched ones on RP servers. The hardest part is finding the right people to connect with who play the way you do.
Where the devs are destroying the RP element in games is in the epic content. No matter how you slice it, the Fellowship of the Rings was an Epic adventure (they went up against a Balgrog), yet for some reason, Tolkein failed to mention that there were really 40 people out there killing him...wtf?! As hard as it is to find 5-6 folks who RP like you, it is virtually impossible to find 39, so if your desire is to see the epic content the game has to offer, then you are forced to step away from RP and play with the power gamers, to whom RP is an anathema.
Nowhere is this more tragically obvious then WoW. An epic storyline, massive adventures, huge opponents, spectacular landscapes...and if you want to see the end game, you're stuck with 39 Diablo/Warcraft fans who'd rather talk about porn and cars then RP.
The way to fix this is change the way end-game content is handled. I blame Brad McQuaid for the "anything worthwhile requires 40 people to do!" attitude that the genre is currently facing. Pre-EQ, very few games required > 10 folks to accomplish a goal, and they just had to be more powerful. EQ gave us the 40-man raid, the power gamers flocked to it, and every MMO since then has followed suit, including WoW, which is just the poster child of "doing everything that the other games did to be successful".
Break the mold, allow the end content to be experienced by 5 people, 5 amazing people. Make it really hard to do, make it epic, but allow it to be seen by 5 people. Finding 5 people who RP like you do isn't hard at all, and actually allows someone to create their RP experience inside the commercial MMO's and still experience all of the game.
Just my 2 copper, for what they are worth.
The closest game I have played yet to have some kind of RPG is dungeons and dragons online. There is no grind in this game, you dont go to a npc and have them require you to kill 40 these and 40 of those. In DDO you play in a story with a narrator talking as you go along.
Yeah this game is instanced and it have to be. How could you make a game players do without competing among themselves? Then at the same time enjoy the RPG in this game. Only way is to make the game 100% instanced.
Have played: CoH, DDO EQ2, FFXI, L2, HZ, SoR, and WW2 online
There needs to be a game where, 1) there are no preprogrammed quests. The quests should be live, real time, whatever you want to call them, and run by gamemasters. Maybe quest isn't even the right word for it. I'll go with event for lack of a better word. Sometimes the events could be as simple as electing a new mayor of your town or something like that. It might be a raid on an orc camp or it might be defending the town from a massive invasion. Whatever it is should have a worldly impact based on the outcome. I think another problem in current MMO's is that if you fail a quest then you can just retry it later on. I think what would be great, and something that would really make every server unique, is the chance of failing a quest and that having an actual effect on the world. If the object is to defend your town from a bunch of ogres or trolls or undead or whatever and the players fail to defend the town then you don't get a second chance to successfully defend the town. Instead it is burned down or taken over by the enemies or whatever. That type of negative worldy impact needs to be part of future MMO's IMO.
Basically what I'm saying is that I haven't seen an MMO yet(and I could be wrong since I haven't played them all) that has the effects of quests going beyond just the individual assigned the quest and that is a problem IMO. You would think that in this day and age that someone could create a real time server that allows for players to have an actual impact on the entire world they're playing in as opposed to just themselves. The last thing that I want to see is another MMO with cookie cutter quests that players can do whenever they want to, as often as they want to until they succeed, without the result having any impact on anyone other than the player completeting the quest.
Good article.
Don't say it isn't because of the money. The success of things like D&D, World of Darkness, Shadowrun, Final Fantasy Franchise, and most other squaresoft RPGs speaks otherwise about the money potential of RPGs. The problem is that MMO developers have a "Follow the success" mentality. The games that have tried to attract the RPer market have been failures, not in that the market is a failure but that the games are just horribly delivered. Its like saying nobody wants to play a Sci-Fi MMO because of how badly AO did at release... AO did badly because the game was in a horrible state and had nothing to do with the genre. But all the developers play "follow the leader".
A good RP game needs to move away from the EQ/WoW quests and have either AO style missions or SoR style rites that provide the appearance of a dynamic world than a static game. You need either game world changing WoW style AQ gate opening events on a regular basis, or Horizons style of game world changing events. I also think non-combat advancement like in Horizons, SoR, or some of the few skill based games is very important so that people can define their own character and be more than a monster grinder. Horizons despite other complaints is the game currently giving the most of this to me.
What roleplayers need are not so much "games" as "virtual worlds" with conflict.
While all that is true, there is roleplay to be had. Roleplayers push for roleplay servers. When a game doesn't have an "RP Server" the community gets together and votes which server they will take as their "unofficial RP server." I've seen this in many, many mmo's. People RP there in the games, and they write fan fiction to support their story being played out in the game.
The problem arises when those game companies give absolutely no support beyond providing the title on the server, "RP Server", "RP Preferred", etc. There is no GM support to promote the RP on the RP servers. Non-RP players are allowed to thumb their noses with names like "Lewtness" and "Gankmaster" and are allowed to taunt, take over the general chats and call RPers a bunch of "gay wussies" and the like. It's very childish behaviour, but when constantly bombarded with these kind of childish people, it makes the RPers throw up their hands in disgust and give up after awhile when the game's support services do nothing to protect the RPers rights on their own RP servers.
After they give us our homes (the RP servers) where we can RP our little hearts out, the game company then always, always walks away and doesn't enforce naming policies, doesn't protect the rights of the RPers on their own servers, doesn't help police the harrassers. They do little to nil in keeping the server rid of RP-griefers and d00dz that do everything they can to harrass the RPers. Heck in at least one mmo I'm playing we don't even get a GM. We have to get the attention of a GM that is covering serveral servers and we went weeks before any official believed we were having horrendous server-wide lag issues because the GM wasn't turning our mountainous complaints over to tech support.
RP servers would have a lot more RP with GM support, because even if the MMO lacks story, it still sets a great stage and backdrop for players to act out their own storylines, and there'd be a lot more of it if the RP communities that arrive on the various games got some real support. We aren't asking for a game to hand us a story, a rich lore is great, but we don't need a story to drive our gameplay as much as we need support so we can RP out our own stories.
very cool artical, and I agree that MMOs are more MMOG then MMORPG.
I personally dont think that you need epic storylines or massive bosses to beat to make a great RPG, it helps but it doesnt make a great RPG. When I first started playing SWG ( Oct 2004) I truely felt like I was liveing in the Star Wars universe. I didnt go on alot of adventures back then, I was a artisan and I had a blast looking for good resources and dogeing the creatures that would incap me in one it. at the same time I liked going "big game hunting". I still have a screenshot of me and a group of players that took down a bull rancor, it was a blast.
My point is to make a great MMORPG the PLAYER needs to care about their caracter, they NEED to feel some pourpose to keep their caracter alive. take away death penilties, and give instant gratification to the players, and you get what we have too much in the current MMOs out there. EVE Online has come the closest to what the author of this artical wants, but even that game takes time to get to the point were the game is more RPG then quest grinding. And even then the grinding is not for XP but the funds to get the ships and equipment to survive in the better areas. I have seen many players gripe that EVE is just about missions and is too easy to get lost on what to do in the game. But EVE just gives you the universe and some pointers. the rest is up to you. I have seen stories were entire systems have changed owners overnight. And CCP is going to expand on that thought and make it possible to have players change the acual political boundries in "empire space"! SO the player has a direct impact on the game universe in such a way that has NEVER been seen in a MMO.
I think the problem is deeper - look at the way the crpg's are going - even oblivion is more console like then morrowind. The problem is that a story have to be more or less linear - it's a story after all, and while with living GM changes to keep players on the right way are quite easy, in a computer game they cannot make it - so they're going the easy way and make the whole game linear... And no one would like to play linear MMO - so they just giving up on rp elements.
btw - commercial pnp rpg seams to be heading same way - new World of Darkness is system wise great, but story wise it's step back - and a big step - from previous edition.
karasu
I agree with everyone who said that the wya to incorporate it is let the players impact the game. I agree with the person who said, and I don't exactly qoute, 'if your character can die and be a live in a shake of the thumb he/she loses their value'. I'm just posting to sat there is SOME hope for games like this. I am beginning to see the buds of these games all over the internet.
Before I continue let it be known that I'm creating a new gaming category, MMOTRPG (t for true).
The very first completed MMOTRPG game I've seen is 'A Tale In the Desert' in that game guilds are for affecting the game helping the comminuity and etc. the graphics may not be good or the movement systems but let it be known that characters can research things that have never ever been touched by any player before and what they research then benifits every other player. In that game players can make petitions for laws, afetr they get some amount of signatures they can post it up and it will be voted on across the whole land. if it is approved the programmers actually PROGRAM the law into the game.
The 2nd Game I would like to sight has been previously sighted in this topic, 'Dragon Empires', and to a lesser extent 'Star Wars Galaxies'. Dragion empiores as of my understanding was supoposed to be like every other MMORPG that exists today EXCEPT for the following. Players could make their own cities with NPCs, players can effect the government, and players can affect the programmed trade prices and etc. I would have enjoyed that game very much. I note star wars galxies, as a lesser, because it would let players build there own cities and set up communities, even if not very well and the GMs take notice of the communities, if you are a SWG player you'll notice a recently added forum (last 6 months) for the Starting Town bar where people are always meeting.
And the final game which I believe is the next and greatest hope of all of the above is 'The Paradise Project' a.k.a. 'The Tea Project' being made by Sylien. Its production unfourtanately is on haitus until early next year due to Syliens contract into the new Trade Wars Tournament. I can't describe my hopes for the game to much but I suggest you visit the website. Not only is it practacilly promised that we will be able to effect the world in nearly every single way the people at Sylien even allow the current memebers to help affect the world BEFORE beta is released. Do visit http://www.gaminginparadise.com/ and http://forums.gaminginparadise.com/
Well I don't think it is going to fix every problem and issue as per your article but I think that Carpe Diem (http://www.carpediemgame.com/) sounds like it is making the closest run to a true MMO RPG - they say they are having real live people playing the main character(s) and that they will have free rein to change things on a world by world basis.
Probably worth keeping an eye on it just to see how this works!
SS
This is easy done in a CRPG, but mmos are not linear, and they could never linear.
And yes i agree with some of the responses, that games like EvE or the early UO was a step in the right
direction. Give players options to do what they want to do, give the game a feeling of a real world which
go further on, and develop their own story line.
Make a game with true player economy, with ever changing realms, and give the players the possibility to
change the world, like EvE have tried it.
There are some games in development, which try exactly that.. but it are mostly games from independent
developers with not as much money as the big ones.
Games like Trials of Ascension, or Darkfall Online, or Renaissance, they try to give the player as much freedom as
possible, so they can create their own world, their own storyline.
But however, in the end it is always dependent to the community and the player himself, sure, you could
feature a lot of gms which play different npcs to drive the story ahead, but this is mostly to expensive,
and the roleplayers are mostly not enough to provide anything like that. And it is mostly much much easyier
to make a lot of money with some sort of a grinding game.. this is also the reasons why the major companies
dont care a lot about real roleplaying. However, we can just hope that one of this small, independent and
enthusiasm companies can deliver a good roleplaying environment in the future, the big ones will never do it.
I always felt that RP is what I make of it.
It is true that some game clients cater more to their RPers than others, and I'd never go to WoW to RP, for instance, but that's not the same as that RP can't be had there.
I've been in SWG for almost two years now, but I've only played the game for 1. After the CU I did still occasionally play, as I could change my template to match the IC progress of my char, but after the NGE I didn't care anymore, as my character was a lot more diverse than 'simply' a trader or a spy. Well, actually, they took out what she is altogether, so... :P
If you want RP, most of the time it's a simple question of finding like-minded people. If you want Epic RP, the same thing applies, only you'd need to know your game very well, so you or an appointed GM can plan out the event(s). I liked the old SWG, because the game catered to the character creation. You could be anything you wanted, with the actual IG skills to back up your character. The game was open, there was no linear story other than what you wanted it to have, you could do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted.
The game was a sandbox full or RP potential and I would love to see something similar pop up again.
As for the 1337 kiddies. Well... yes... they can ruin RP, but only if you let them. For the most part I usually have a more 'live and let live' philosophy on OOCers, and I'm hardly ever griefed. So what if they're running around in a town where I RP? Only makes for more 'generic' hustle and bustle, applying a 'back ground' noice to the place. Most of the time I ignore them, as I would a race that spoke a language I don't understand.
Once saw someone study them, ICly, faschinated by their behaviour and interactions, trying to fathom their drive... was hillarious.
Bottomline, though, if you want RP, make it. Don't wait for the Developers to cater it to you. More often than not, the RP you make yourself is a lot more gratifying and diverse than having to go through the same storyline or even just the same quests as thousands of others.
"Oh, did I ever tell you about the time I went to slay the horrible fiend, Namahughuzahil? Was a truely great battle, I can tell you that. And once it died, I slept for eight d-"
"Wait, what? You slayed it? No, way! I did that too! What a coincidence, huh?"
"What, you guys killed Namahughuzahil? Cool! So did we!"
I'd take a sandbox game over fixed missions and forced character 'developement' anyday
"So I contend that the player stories will always be more powerful than the scripted stories that we try to tell the players."
- Will Wright
but still, somehow, the atmosphere in some of the games.... e.g. lineage 2 - what a horrible grind game, but still i am palying it (well, just started recently).
or take player housing - as much as i hated it when i started paying mmos, it is the only thing that makes me return to swg atm.
so i guess all we who want the rpg part and still play current mmos, must be pretty desparate
SpellBorn looks very promising - there is some good story to begin with. There will be some single player quests - so they can be made like offline crpg. And what Bree'ah said about bosses - in SpellBorn they will be slain once - and then gone. So if anyone slay a boss then can boast about it
Agree 99%, except that there is a mmorpg that has at least tried to maintain a semblance of 'rpg' & storytelling, which is Guild Wars. Haven't tried D&DO so I can't comment.
They say that right before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. That's true, even for a blind man. ^DareDevil^
Nice Article, but i'd agree with others that cutscenes and instanced quests aren't the way to add RPG back into the fold.
Player VS Player!!!
In my humble opinion, player vs player is the only way to develop a true RPG story for players to take part in. Now i'm not talking just about combat, i'm talking about competition between players in every facet of the virtual gameworld.
Trade & Commerce, Social & Political Influence, and other aspects, should be the focal point for player vs player interaction. Combat would be a function of those.
So, instead of just having a world where players running around hacking at each other's torso, you'd have a world where killing, wounding or damaging the reputation of another player is for gain elsewhere in the virtual world. Careless killing would result in consequences (game or player delivered doesn't matter), as that would add a realistic element to the world as well. If you go around attacking people in the real world, you get in the sh1t. Clever people (clever players in game terms), should by design be able to (with some difficulty) create situations where they can achieve their goals without consequences or with 'acceptable to them' consequences.
Now i'm not talking about punishing griefing, I mean to encourage 'creative' griefing. Instead of 'Gee, he's a lowbie i'll gank him now', it could be 'Gee, if I manage to kill that guy (who's a big wig in a rival assassin guild) and get away with it, i'll gain good standing with my own assassin guild'. Yes, it can still be called griefing, but it's PVP so deal wif it! A game shouldn't reward a griefer if he's shit at it in my opinion, and ideally if it's PART of the game a griefed player would have realistic gameworld means of getting revenge anyway.
Attacking the wrong player or corporation in EVE Online for example can result in royally f'king yourself, and so it's wise to use caution when engaging in an action that may have consequences. Not a perfect example, but I would like a game to have a system of action and consequence, where the game doesn't do the punishing and instead opens up for other players means to enact it.
Combine player vs player design with a dynamic based gameworld and I think you'd see something special. It may not get the millions that WoW or other cookie & milk games might get it, but it would be an ever changing always developing game where players forge the story. I get goosebumps even thinking about such a game.