Interesting stuff

[Imgormiel]

A must read for all tbh :-

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070326/sorens_01.shtml

 

[Flimgoblin]

sounds like someone who's overplayed WoW and lost the "PEG" (Persistent Entity Game) buzz...

He's hit the nail on the head with the persistent entity - a lot of this game is about character progression, but then again so is something like final fantasy 12... sure there's also a plot to follow the analogy in an MMO being quests following on from each other.

He discounts the "large number of players" as being an important factor which I disagree with: maybe it's not important for everyone in WoW, but for dark age of camelot RvR and Raiding are big parts of the games appeal... it's what makes Planetside notably different from Battlefield 2142...

Though I would say it's a good metric: If the Massively Multiplayer part doesn't matter then you've got a bad MMO.. or you should at least be asking "why are we making this massively multiplayer anyway?"

He highlights boring gameplay and suggests more twitch gameplay (and more challenges from the monsters admittedly) but that's hardly a failing that's exclusive to MMOs. Plus while your average trash monster rarely varies the quests/boss encounters etc. all tend to require tactics and strategies, as well as "twitch" skills in reacting - there's more to playing a cleric for example than mashing the spreadheal button...

How much variety and interest does the average FPS retain? you point, you shoot. You sometimes have to point and shoot quite quickly...

Sure the boss encounters are scripted and once you know the tactics you can often just use the same thing to defeat the boss (and sadly since ML9 pets defeat just about every boss if we ignore broken game mechanics like that there are tactics to killing all the different "raid" level encounters in daoc) but how's that different to, say, anything in the offline Final Fantasy series?

Admittedly they don't charge you 8 quid a month for the privilege of killing that boss monster and keeping your character, but the content changes, the game evolves...

If the only thing in an MMO was purely grinding as fast as possible to get to the top level (which for some people it is...) then I'd agree with them it's a bad game genre with nothing but the same idea rehashed over and over again with prettier graphics... thankfully it's not.

It's also true that the fantasy MMORPGs tend to be derivative, UO stuck a graphical interface on a MUD, EQ made UO in 3d, Daoc was EQ with RvR, WoW is EQ with a better interface...

But Half life 2 is just Half life with fancy graphics and a gravity gun, half life is just doom with fancier graphics and some plot, doom is wolfenstein with nicer graphics..

Edit:
His conclusion:

It may just sound like I hate PEGs, but that could not be further from the truth. I have played almost all of them well beyond the traditional free first month—at least the Western ones—and appreciate their unique appeal. However, it is frustrating to see the stagnation and missed opportunities for growth and improvement (a common sentiment about the game industry as whole, I know).

As long as developers and publishers do nothing but copy what is successful, they—and gamers—will continue to miss out on these games’ staggeringly awesome potential. And as long as PEGs are designed by and for stat geeks (whom I know and love and sometimes am) with little regard for traditional game design fundamentals, they will continue to waste that potential.

The good news is that excellent ideas, the dedication necessary to see them to fruition, and the money to support them inevitably collide. It is only a matter of time before we see these games and think of them not as “good MMOs” but as good action games, good driving games, good sports games, and so on, with the persistent-entity aspect being just one of many attractive features.

Which isn't actually saying a lot but his point that eventually people will stop caring about the fact it's got "MMO" on the front of it ... i.e. it's an FPS, it happens to be MMO is fair enough, but for the time being the fact that an FPS has 1000 players is a noteworthy feature of that game... so is the difference between an offline RPG and an MMORPG...

His point is that the current crop of MMO's are substandard and have lots of missed opportunities - that applies to non-MMOs too, noone's written the perfect game yet games evolve, get better. If anything is in the MMOs favour it's that they change far more than any offline game ever will.

Plus, despite what he says, WoW is a good game, it might be that it's the carrot progressquest that makes it fun, but it's still fun to play. It might get boring once you've "Completed" the game and got to level 60/70/whatever it is these days and found the game has changed entirely, but before then it's a good game, it's entertaining. Same with DAOC.

Now it might just be that turn-based Roleplaying games where character progression plays a big part is not his cup of tea (he probably hates final fantasy too...) or he's just been on one raid too many and failed to win that roll but that whole article reads like the sort of thing you'd find on somewhere like Freddyshouse or VN (ok ok, once in a blue moon, and after someone's cleaned all the flames out of it...) - a "wah I hate this feature" MMO rant... Maybe that's what was intended... maybe I'm just the wrong audience and his elucidation of the common MMO flaws is more insightful to non-MMO addicts

Personally I think he'd have been better doing this as a "bad game designer, no twinkie - MMO edition" style ala Ernest adams (see http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060710/adams_01.shtml)

 

[GrivneKelmorian]

But Half life 2 is just Half life with fancy graphics and a gravity gun, half life is just doom with fancier graphics and some plot, doom is wolfenstein with nicer graphics..

And Ludo is a game wich comes from the hindu religion about a journey through life and reincarnations to nirvana.
It is also a game wich at the same times the hindu invented it, was invented by the inca indians in southamerica.. message is about the same.

But with better grafics on a board.

All games have a successor.. there arnt really any "new" or innovative games.. theres new and innovative game mechanics.

 

[Flimgoblin]

there's the occasional "breakthrough" game, or refinement of an idea enough to make people go "wow, why haven't we seen that before?".. Lemmings? Worms?

But all ideas come from other ideas put together in different ways which then becomes an idea of itself, gets glued to some other idea etc. etc...

That barnett bloke said it a bit better: http://www.myspace.com/thatbarnettbloke
see his blog entries on "how to have an idea"

 

[GrivneKelmorian]

there's the occasional "breakthrough" game, or refinement of an idea enough to make people go "wow, why haven't we seen that before?".. Lemmings? Worms?

But all ideas come from other ideas put together in different ways which then becomes an idea of itself, gets glued to some other idea etc. etc...

That barnett bloke said it a bit better: http://www.myspace.com/thatbarnettbloke
see his blog entries on "how to have an idea"

yeah, as i sad.. all successfull games are a ripoff from another one.. but made in alot better way and it dosnt show as much..

and what i said about Ludo, is true btw

 

[Flimgoblin]

and what i said about Ludo, is true btw

nifty

 

[GrivneKelmorian]

nifty

yeah, its quite intresting how such a simple game such as Ludo can represent something so highly religious as mans journey towards nirvana..

 

[Zede]

what a whiney twat.

put this guy as head honcho developing a new mmorpg.

the game would be really cool n all' and released in 2017.