MMO history, that Bartle guy, and why WoW2 won’t blow your mind.

It seems we had a busy weekend in the MMO blog world, fueled by an interview with Richard Bartle done by Michael Zenke over at Massively. As with anything remotely interesting posted on the internet these days, the responses to the interview, and the multitude of blog posts related to it, range from the ‘you’re an idiot stfu’ to ‘exactly what I was thinking’.

The real headline grabbing line of the interview is the comment “I’ve already played Warhammer. It was called World of Warcraft“, which when taken out of context or misinterpreted is all the internet needs to jump on the nerd rage bandwagon. When clarified (Bartle was talking about the setting itself), he is actually only 50% correct. Originally WoW was indeed the Warhammer setting without the official license (they lost that at some point in development), but only until Blizzard started putting their unique spin on the world. The Warhammer IP is lacking such gems as pretty evil elves, noble aliens that are descendents of the super evil alien guys, and a world where everyone (aside from said super evil aliens) is a good guy, just misunderstood. Even the undead are good guy freedom fighters, yay! It might be a world, but outside of a magic arena, there is very little war being crafted.

Bastardized lore bitching aside, Bartle does bring up an interesting point to someone who has been in the MMO scene since Neverwinter Nights; MMOs really are fairly similar now. Think about it, when Ultima Online came out, it was totally new. So new that the term MMO was a few years off, and everyone was a damn noob just logging on and wandering around (and getting PK’ed). Then came EverQuest, and how many people looked at EQ and said ‘eh, it’s UO with elves, who cares’? Right, no one. What you did hear was ‘EQ is carebear land, gtfo newbie’. Which was accurate, EQ was carebear land compared to UO, but more importantly, EQ was radically different than UO in almost every single way. While UO catered to the explorer and the killer, EQ was designed for the achiever and socializer. The final piece of the original ‘big three’ was Asheron’s Call. When AC came out, was it considered ‘EQ in a random setting’? Again, no. And AC had its own charm and gameplay that was again different than UO or EQ. The original ‘big three’ where all successful in their own way, and offered gamers at the time three unique choices in setting, gameplay, and overall game design philosophy.

Fast forward to 2004 and World of Warcraft, and you start hearing talk of ‘a more polished EQ’. Sure the setting was different, WoW brought a huge host of design changes that later became MMO standards, and above all it was a damn fun game, but it was not the radical change that UO/EQ/AC were when compared to each other. WoW followed the EQ formula, gave it a bigger budget, and polished it until it was done.

Finally, we have Age of Conan and soon Warhammer Online, two major games that from day one were being billed as ‘WoW but with feature x’. Which is not exactly a bad thing in terms of good MMO gaming from a pure fan perspective (readers know I’m dying to play WAR), but it does say something about the current trend in MMO gaming, and what the future might hold. With budgets as big as they are today, and with so much at stake financially, perhaps the days of great innovation are gone, and the best we can hope for in a triple A title going forward is the EQ formula + twist x. Look at any major trend that blew up, be it shooter games (Doom), sports games (Madden), or racing games (Need for Speed, Grand Turismo), and what do we see? Madden (insert current year), the same game as last year but with one new gimmick. Is it really that shocking that MMO gaming, which officially became ‘kind of a big deal’, has followed the same pattern of success?

Innovation is still alive and well, but you won’t find it in games with millions of subscribers. You will find it in games like EVE, A Tale in the Desert, Shadowbane, and countless other ‘niche’ games. And has history has shown us time and time again, the niche will be culled; the best features harvested out, and ‘polished’ for the release of WoW2. And like you, I’ll be there day one, like a good little fanboi, dying to get into beta.

Live free or perma-die… but not so hard.

The idea of perma-death has been around for as long as MMOs have. It’s one of those ‘hot button’ issues that always polarizes fans and leads to long forum threads discussing its merits. This is not a forum, but here are my views on why perma-death could not only be viable, but actually add a huge element to an MMO, if done right. 

The first problem with the idea is that people often times try to apply it to current games. They try to imagine WoW or EQ2 with perma-death, and then raise all the issues of why it would not be a good idea. Of course it would not work in those games, they are not designed for it. What fun would it be to re-quest the same area each time you die, or lose all your shiny epics you worked so hard to get. And what fun would it be to re-level the same race/class combo for the 8^th time? Perma-death in the games out today would be a very, very bad idea.

 

But what if you designed a game around perma-death at its core, could it actually ADD anything new to the standard MMO formula? The first thing that would need to go would be leveling, replaced by some form of skill-based advancement. Next each skill itself would be fairly easy to ‘max out’, but the amount of skills, and the time it takes to learn additional skills would have to be vast. For example, say you want to be a warrior style character. You pick sword fighting, plate armor, and parry as your first skills. It would only take you a week or so to max those out. However, you still lack block, axe fighting, evade, etc. In addition, the more skills you learn, the slower the progress, so the order in which you gain skills will also become a factor. Lock picking is a nice skill, but if you get it before stealth, it will greatly delay you being able to stealth and actually get yourself in a position to take advantage of lock picking.

 

So now we have our skill based system, with its quick rewards but great depth, how exactly does that effect perma-death? Let’s say to kill an above average mob, you need 5 fighting skills maxed, plus some decent gear. If we assume getting to that point takes a month, in a months time anyone will be able to jump in and engage interesting mobs and go on the higher-end quests that offer the top rewards. Of course, it would still be dangerous, and with perma-death, a bad pull or misplaced jump would mean far more than a corpse run or some xp loss. To truly become a great fighter, someone with 10+ skills maxed, you not only need more patience, but also have to be a good judge of danger, and likely have a solid group around you helping you along the way. And even then, at any point, you could still have an ill-fated moment and die. Perma-death adds that degree of danger like no other system can.

 

But let’s say you do die with your 10+ skills character. If he is gone for good, it would be tough to just say ‘ah well’ and try it again. You put a lot of effort into that character, and now you are left with nothing but memories. Or maybe not. What if instead of having to re-roll from scratch, your next character would be the kin of your former. The father was slain by orcs, and now the son seeks to avenge him. He is younger, so his skills are diminished, but he shares the same goals and qualities of his father. In gameplay terms, this might mean you start with some former maxed skills at 50%, or perhaps former max skills are now gained at an increased rate. In addition, since you are the son, you have access to your fathers vault and estate, allowing you to equip what armor and weapons he left behind, as well as having a nice bank roll to buy yourself some training. In WoW/EQ terms, let’s say instead of level 1, you start with a character around level 25.

 

But what if, after your death, you decide you want to try being a blacksmith? It’s entirely possible to take your mid skill fighter son and get him started down the path of a blacksmith. It would be a slow process, similar to starting from scratch, but with the benefit of your former characters wealth and experience. Being somewhat skilled with the blade, you are also able to venture out into territory most regular smiths would not have access to, allowing you to gain more valuable ore/gems to further your crafting. It would not be the highest level stuff, as for that you would need someone with the strength of a 10+ skill fighter, but still better than a smith with no fighting skill.

 

By intertwining perma-death with a kin/family structure, you add depth and a new twist on character creation. Each time one dies, you get to start with a different looking character, one that already has some history to him/her. This ‘kin’ history could be displayed in a bio page for each family tree. This type of system would also allow certain characters, those that have managed to avoid death for long periods of time, to achieve greater and greater power, gaining a high level of admiration from the player community. A legendary smith, an ancient woodworker, or an unstoppable killer. It would also be quite the event any time one of these ‘older’ characters meets death, their lifespan recounted on forums or even in-game news posts.