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From Daring Explorers to Fedex Mailboys: Our MMO Evolution
By Cameron Sorden | June 26, 2007
Pvthudson has a pretty lengthy rant up over at Wife Aggro that I found quite interesting. The overall gist of it is this: He’s tired of questing. Rather, he’s tired of quests as advancement. I’ve gotta say, I’m right there with him. This quote jumped out at me and struck a chord as soon as I saw it:
“Over the past two and a half years we have actually become DUMBER MMO players rather than smarter. We have all become some sort of odd zombie when we log in that expects to be told or directed what to do for that nights activities.”
When I think back to my days playing EQ1, some of my best memories were of exploring uncharted territory and seeing what there was to see. We had no quests driving us, no overarching objectives, and no real reason to go. The lure of new fantastic sights and new loot pulled us ever onward. The only reason you descended into the Crystal Caverns was for the promise of an interesting dungeon to explore and the rumors of strange rock creatures that dropped valuable gems. The only reason you packed up your sword and headed for the shores of the Lake of Ill Omen was because people were telling tales of fantastic beasts, great drops, and even greater xp!
You went where the xp was hot and where you had an urge to go. When you did find a great place to camp money or kill monsters, it was awesome! You hung out and got rich. You brought your friends and grew strong. It was all about the adventures you made for yourselves, and your story of advancement… and it was unique. Your path to 60 wasn’t the same as your friend’s. Your first character’s path to max level could be wildly different than your second: different locations, different dungeons, different monsters.
These days (notably in LoTRO, WoW, and the bit of EQ2 I played), things are different. There is a clear and defined path to the maximum level. Quests ferry you from location to location, and you always have something to be working on. In fact, you often level too fast for the quests you have in each of those games and have to drop some as you pass them. Some players love this system. I floated the idea of an xp grinding group in my guild last night and was met with scorn– why grind xp when there are so many quests to work on? I answered, “Well, because it’s fun… and social. The loot is good, and we can group up and kill things together!” No response. I sighed and went back to working on my quest chains, solo.
Don’t get me wrong– I LOVE solo content. Hell, I don’t know that I’d be able to advance very far at all without solo content. But there’s something wrong when people are totally adverse to the idea of playing together unless it advances this solo chain they’re working on. Why? Isn’t the point of these games to play with friends? Don’t you have more fun killing stuff in groups? Especially in LoTRO, where the bonus modifiers are significant for grouping. If we don’t have any motivation or repercussions for killing anything, then lets just go have fun doing it, damn it!
But it’s even deeper than that. I see a lot of complaining that quests aren’t complex enough. People are tired of being asked to kill ten rats, to gather wood, to fetch hides, and to carry water. It seems that we can universally agree that these quests are boring. Furthermore, it limits your choices as to what you can do. Granted, you don’t have to kill ten rats. You could go exploring and kill some wolves. But don’t expect anyone to do it with you… they’re too busy complaining about how they had to kill ten rats, and they leveled twice as fast as you by doing so.
What happened to quests being rare and complex? Why is running love letters back and forth between two hobbits a quest at all? Why do I need to be told how to go play in my sandbox? Why do we need quests at all?
Here’s the easiest way to get rid of the “kill ten rats” quests: Lets get rid of meaningless quests and put the adventure back into our adventuring. It’s not much of an adventure when someone says, “Go here, do this, then come back to me for further instruction.” Then you spend two hours following his instructions. Then you do it again. Rinse and repeat from 1-50.
I want to be the master of my own destiny again. I don’t want to feel like I have a list of chores when I log into my MMO (”Hmm, lets see… I need 20 spiders, 6 orcs, 14 goblins, and three foozle-feathers.”), and I don’t want to feel like I’m some kind of insane pariah for wanting to deviate off the beaten and pre-planned path.
Topics: Random |
June 26th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
There are two types of player: those that can tell/create/make their own stories/adventures, and those that need to have a story told to them. The first is far less common than the second…
I blame Hollywood. (/joke)
The MMO dev is going for mass-market appeal. They know the first type of player will play their game anyway. The second type is the one that needs the incentives.
They pump up the number of quests to help minimize the requirement to grind, and then people start to complain about the quests! You just can’t please some people… (heh)
June 26th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
One of the first things I ever wrote on my site was a 3-article series on why and how quest design in MMOs should be revamped: http://hallower1980.blogspot.com/search?q=%22quest+design+in+MMORPGs%22 (just skip the “Instancing” article at the top)
A key question for me is: How much control do most players really need and want over their gameplay?
Myself, I’m *obsessed* with dynamics and adventures that I, as a player, can’t control. When my character wanders into a particular forest, I should know from NPC hints and rumors the rough level of danger and what I *might* encounter. But I don’t want to be able to predict my encounters much beyond that.
EQ was my first MMO, and lasted a little over 9 months. I think a big factor in my loss of enjoyment was the increasing predictability of gameplay. Whether you ask for it or not, as an MMO player, you constantly hear other players talking about encounters, loot, quests, and other experiences you haven’t had yet (unless you always solo and close your dialogue box). I want to play a game where other players can only give me a rough idea of what to expect, because there’s just no telling for sure.
Anyway, I think many others would enjoy a game like that as well, but sometimes I’m a little fearful that I’m just projecting my own style onto other gamers. I like most of my control to be in how I deal with the experiences I encounter, rather than which experiences I find.
June 27th, 2007 at 5:16 am
@Aaron: I think there are a subset of existing players that would love that type of experience, and a growing base of additional players that will come to start seeking it out over the next few years.
I really do think this is a learned, “expert-level” if you will, perspective. It requires a solid foundation of knowledge of memes and expectations in order to fully engage with.
My first sojourn in SW:G may be a good object example. I got the game opening day, worked thru the technical issues, and started play. However, I was never the biggest Star Wars fan… I enjoyed the movies, of course, but I didn’t know a lot of the deeper lore, or have a real good mental model of the universe as a whole. I found it very difficult to enjoy the game (the interface and icons were also cryptic enough that it threw me for a loop for a time).
Later, I went back, after I had gotten a better feel for the setting from exploring the game mechanics systems, reading the manual and forum commentary, etc., and it was far more engaging.
More recently, I went and tried the latest New Experience version, which is far more of a guided walkthru experience than the original. It was infinitely easier to connect to the setting. It was also quickly boring, because it was obviously an “experience on rails”, if you will.
My own goal would be to try to accommodate all levels of experience. Perhaps even a game setting that provides more or less direction and information based on the user’s preferences? Not sure how well that would work… if the crutch is available, most people will use it, even if it stunts their total enjoyment, simply for convenience sake. an interesting quandary…
June 27th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Your last two entries were like reading my own thoughts, just stated better than I could. You’ve really made me nostalgic for the adventuring part of mmo’s that I have long missed. And likely this is why I have enjoyed EQ and DAOC (pve only) more than any other games. These were the only two I’ve played that were not quest-driven. Sure there was a quest here and there for change of pace. But ultimately the route of experience was out in the field or deep in a dungeon.
A few times I’ve thought of asking in “looking for fellowship” channel in LOTRO if anyone would like to get together for an old fashioned killing spree. But I don’t have the courage to for fear of crickets, or even worse, laughter.
The questing also makes alts less enjoyable. Just thinking of having to redo the same exact quests makes me shudder. As you stated, to me it feels exactly like a list of chores.
June 28th, 2007 at 8:52 am
Totally agree that, seems to me that mmorpgs are being dumbed down and set on rails.
I dont think its the quests themselves that are an issue. Its the way they are being presented and the way, you the player are funneled through to certain areas right for your lvl.
Its one of the issues that I would like to really get into in Strangelands and started to open that door with the question on how mmorpg are lagging behind fantasy books and immersion in story with out being railroaded …
I think Vanguard tried to do this with a very sandbox approach to adventuring however they seemed to compleatly drop the ball when it game to the story and why am I here …
June 29th, 2007 at 12:32 am
Hey Cameron,
Excellent take on the quest area of these games, while my article is just more about the quest journal itself and how I feel it is not helping the games. As stated above, your writing my thoughts on this very part of these games. I too had the most fun in EverQuest quest system, not so much the find the key[word] in the dialog, but that I was pretty much forced to read what the NPC was telling me, I felt a part of the world in that I knew excatally what this person wanted, how important it was for them, and this gave me more of an incentive to complete the quest.
While there were still a lot of questionable quests in EverQuest just as any MMO game, because of the lack of a Quest Journal I did a lot more adventuring than I did questing in that game. Which is where a lot of the fun can come from and helped us in those days to meet other players and make friends. Not a huge world by today’s standards, I still felt much bigger than today’s games.
After my theme upgrade, there will be a hole lot more articles on the whole questing aspect in these games as I feel this could be the easiest area for developers to improve, since combat is just an EQ Bard (every class in today’s MMO twist), and Crafting is pretty much back to EQ days as well, collect components – hit combine.
Again, thanks for the article, it was the kind of thinking I knew must be out there.