Joey thinks about what he'd really like to see in an MMO

The last two weeks I thought about World of Warcraft. This week I'm thinking about what, to me, would be the perfect online multi-player video game.

     Before I go any further, I've gotten several complaints from my loyal readers that they have no idea what I'm talking about here. Specifically, they want to know what all this MMO stuff is about. If you know what an MMO is, then go ahead and skip this part. If not, I'm going to put it as plainly as I know how.
     MMO is short for MMOG which stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Basically what we're talking about is a game which is connected via the internet between many different players from different physical locations. Typically it is a single game world where all the player's characters exist together and can interact together. MMOG is further divided into several categories, MMORPG or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. MOBA or Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. Not to mention a few more obscure ones. These games run the gamut between simple life simulation games like Second Life, to hyper realistic sandbox space simulation games, like Eve Online. The variety and multitude of online games is simply astounding.
     I hope this answers any questions my readers have. If it doesn't, please leave a comment below asking for clarification. I'll see what I can do.

     I've always had the opinion that the two most important things in any video games are freedom and realism. Before we go any further, allow me to clarify. When I say realism I don't mean an exact copy of our world. What I mean is that things in the game are realistic in the context of that world. As a great English professor once told me, "People will be believe the impossible, but not the improbable." In other words, if there are dragons in that world, I'll believe it when they singlehandedly  destroy a castle. However, I won't believe a character with shoddy dialogue, or one with stupid motivations, or an ancient, cunning dragon being tricked by a fourteen year-old boy.

                                                               By Cellpod

That's not a direct reference to anything, by the way. I just love dragons. Also, I don't like Eragon, so if you can make that burn fit Eragon, that would be perfect.

     Now that I've laid out the two things that are most important for me, I'm going to immediately contradict myself and put in some caveats. First of all, I'm not totally opposed to bending reality somewhat to make game mechanics more fun. For instance, if we played, say a Lord of The Rings game and all the main characters were playable classes, there would be huge gaps in power between the players, since they exit in the story. Everyone would want to be Gandalf, and no one would want to be Merry or Pippins. And that wouldn't be good game design. So something has to be done about that.  Preferably it would be something that doesn't mess with the internal logic of their world. Just flat out making Merry as strong as Gandalf would be an easy fix, but would also suck in terms of realism. A better fix is to have Merry face easier challenges, as he did in the book.

     Alright, we got our priorities and our caveats out of the way. Let's get down to brass tacks. There are essentially six specific game play mechanics that must be present for any game to be my perfect MMO. As usual I'll break them down into sections in order of least important to most important.

1) Skill based characters

     Skill based characters basically means that the characters don't level up in the traditional sense, instead each character has access to every skill, and players level individual skills up by using said skills. For example, every character would start with a one in horseback riding, and to raise horseback riding, you have to ride horses. To raise swordsmanship you fight enemies with a sword. To raise skill with magic you cast spells, etc.. I prefer this mechanic over traditional leveling for two reasons. First, it means that characters are not restricted by class, which feeds into my freedom thing. Secondly it means that players do not have to be in a group to share experience, since XP is gained by using abilities, not by defeating enemies.

2) Permanent player created buildings

     I'm not a big fan of Minecraft. I don't really like playing it. However, I give it credit where credit is due. Before Minecraft came out I had never even considered the idea that we might someday play virtual games where we could construct our own buildings. This particular point is extremely important, because my idea for a perfect game involves a vast uncharted wilderness with the players starting in a central point and working their way out, clearing land and beasts, until they claim the world. With that basis, permanent buildings are a must.

                                                        Planet Minecraft

A single, human person built this alone and for free. Just think about that.

3) Permanent NPC death

     For those of you who don't know, NPC just means non-player character, or to be even more clear, a character in the game, which is not controlled by players. As players build villages, trading posts, and outposts, NPCs will slowly come into those places and inhabit them. These NPC will be generated with random genders, body types, coloring, names and skill sets (although the skills will make sense for what they are, a shop keeper would have skill in shop keeping etc.). These NPCs will be totally unique. So to make the players have an emotional connection to the world, if an NPC dies, it will stay dead. A new one will eventually come to replace them, but not for a while, and Ted, the fair haired, stocky man, will never come back.

4) Realms controlled by GM

     Again, some explaining. GM stands for Game Master. Originally GM referred to someone who ran a D&D game, but the definition has expanded to include people who arbitrate in online games. I already mentioned that my game would basically be a man vs. wild sort of thing, but I want this game to be a living, breathing world. Until computers are smart enough to figure out how to adapt to new situations we'll just have people who control the realms and make sure it stays challenging for the players. What I'm basically imaging is that the GM will be in control of monster population and migration, and any raids on towns or villages. They will periodically plan raids on these places, and give players a chance to figure out when and where ahead of time so enough players can be online and in position be of help.

5) Small population realms

     So I'm not sure what would be reasonable here. Basically what I want to avoid is the ridiculous overcrowding that sometimes happens in some MMOs that don't have checks on population. I'm thinking no more then a thousand per realm, though that may change. One character per player per realm, and every realm will have different topography. The smaller population will also add to a sense of community, which I mentioned World of Warcraft used to have, but no longer does. Obviously I don't know what number I want for realms at this point. If this ever becomes a reality, testing will need to be done.

6)  Permanent mob death

     Mob means enemy. Its old gamer slang from way back in the day. It refers to any enemy, be it monster or person or monkey, which is a person but also a monster. Some of you, those who play MMOs, are probably thinking this is a stupid idea. Well let me finish. As you clear an area of Orcs, those Orcs stay dead. However, deep in the jungles to the west is the native Orc breeding ground. If players clear an area and don't create a village or outpost nearby within say a week, an Orcish raiding party will show up and retake the land, building a stronger camp than before. And not just Orcs. All manner of monsters and people and monkeys will have the same treatment.

    I think I'm going long here, so I'll finish with that and split this into two entries. Next week will be the last entry in this four-part foray into online video games. It will be a vivid imagining of what my perfect MMO will look like.

joey thinks about World of Warcraft, then and now.

Last week I spoke about World of Warcraft and its addictive yet enchanting nature. This week I talk about the continuing evolution of WoW and how its changed over the years.

     World of Warcraft was an amazing game when it first came out. It was groundbreaking in so many ways and even to this day has over seven million players. That being said, it isn't the same game it once was. Its changed, as I mentioned in my last blog. Well, what's changed, and is it good or bad?

     Since release, WoW has basically been on a downhill slope of difficulty. Vanilla WoW started fairly easy for new players, but as one leveled up, the difficult ramped up as well. Around level thirty (the highest obtainable level back then was sixty) the game became pretty difficult in many ways. At level sixty the instances were downright brutal, at least at first. As the game progressed and players got better at the game and obtained higher level gear, those instances became somewhat easier, but still had a rather high difficulty level. Group makeup really mattered and we had to work together as a team.

     Flash forward to last week. As I mentioned I just started playing WoW again. I'm playing with some newbies who are real world friends of mine. We were delving into an instance that I remember quite well from the old days. Called Black Fathom Deeps, it was a very unpopular instance for one very important reason: it was way out of the way. As players, particularly if you were on the alliance, it was a long walk to reach it's physical location. Its difficulty was higher than the average as well, I believe. As I mentioned last week, actually getting to the physical location of dungeons is no longer required, so reaching it was not an issue.

     We ran the instance until about halfway through, at which point I was disconnected. I was playing the tank (The tank is arguably the most important role in any group, since they protect their friends from taking damage) and texted them to let them know what had happened and that I was going to sleep, since I was tired anyways. The rest of the group left and then they proceeded to beat the instance themselves. Two level-appropriate characters, both of which were DPS and unable to heal themselves, completed the instance by themselves. Beyond that, both of the players were big time newbies. If this is all gibberish to you, this is the important part: this would never have happened even a year ago. The game has become ridiculously easy.

     Other things have changed as well. Quests are now homogenized to an obscene extent. They don't make me feel like a hero, as they once did, they make me feel like I'm at work, like I have to punch a card so many times before I get another number over my head, so I can do it again. Their is very little variety, there is very little difficulty, there is very little fun. And its a shame, because Blizzard has clearly put in a tremendous amount of work in this last expansion. They've created a new continent with five distinct zones. Its a huge area and its interesting and new. But its also easy. So easy. There's no sense of accomplishment anymore.

     The characters have changed too. In vanilla our level progression was simple. Past level nine, every even level we'd gain a talent point to assign as we'd like, every odd level we'd gain a new ability, which we had to pay for. Money was a little harder to come by back then, and I distinctly remember going up in level sometimes and being totally unable to buy any new abilities due to my extreme poverty. It kind of makes sense too, if you think about it. These are heroes venturing into the wild.  If they really wanted to make money, they'd get a job.

     The level progression has changed. Dramatically. Basically, to put it in a nutshell, Blizzard has been steadily simplifying and dumbing down the talent and leveling system since release. At this point there is so little freedom on how to set up characters now that they all pretty much seem the same. At its core, this is Blizzard taking away our freedom to fail. There no longer is a best spec. There's just the one spec that everyone can pick. And here's the really important thing that I don't think Blizzard gets, without the ability to fail, we never really succeed at anything. You can't have one without the other, and so its nothing. Its terrible. Of all the changes, I think I hate this one the most.

     I mentioned money too. Gold used to be very hard to come by. Players were not allowed to ride any kind of mount until level forty, and then the mounts cost one-hundred gold piece. That was quite a bit of gold back than. I was level sixty on my first character long before I could afford my first mount. Add to that the fact that the level sixty, or epic, mount cost one-thousand gold pieces, most players were chronically poor and horseless back than. These days the first mount is unlocked at level twenty, with the epic mount unlocked at level forty. The game is balanced so that characters will have enough money to buy their mounts as they level.

     I guess to summarize, the game has been adjusted to cater to the very lowest common denominator. If we were to rank players in terms of skill, one to ten, I would honestly rate myself an eight in most categories (I'm lower in player versus player).  And as such, to have a sense of success or achievement, I need a challenge that's set for players with skill similar to mine, maybe one or two points in either direction. The game has now been balanced to be playable, and beatable, by a one. And that's a problem. I can't enjoy beating a one, when I'm an eight. I guess it kind of relates to my world view with politics as well. Its the philosophy of lowering the standards of everyone to accommodate the few.

     The point of my article last week was that many players, myself included, find themselves inexorably drawn back to WoW no matter how many times they quit. I'm somewhat relieved, and saddened almost to the point of tears, that this game is no longer WoW as I remember it. Almost everything that made it great is gone. It has changed and evolved until it only vaguely resembles the game it once was. It is a bloated monstrosity and a shadow of its former self, all at once. After less than one month of playing WoW again I've cancelled my subscription. I very highly doubt that I'll be back again. We had good times, times I won't forget, probably ever. But those times are over, and I'm moving on.

This week I talked about my first real love in the realm of Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games. Next week I'll talk about what I like in the genre, and what, to me, would be the perfect MMORPG.

Joey thinks about an old girlfriend

     So recently I met up with an old girlfriend I hadn't seen in a while.  She's one of those girls you know are bad for you, but you just can't say no to.  She took all my time with the promise of  excitement and adventure.  And boy did we have adventures.  We got into all kinds of scrapes together.  We met new people and made new friends.  She took me places.  Places I could never go on my own.  The wonder of seeing the world through her eyes is indescribable.  But eventually it got old.  There's only so much you can see through one person's eyes before it gets dull.  She wanted to keep doing what we were doing, but I broke it off.  It was unhealthy.

     Then I saw her again this past month.  It was a chance meeting.  When I saw her I couldn't help but remember all the good times we had.  All the adventures we went on.  All the fun times we spent walking for hours at a time, looking for other people to hang out with.  All the people we met together.  All the quests we did.  All the monsters we killed.  Maybe I should have mentioned this earlier.  My old girlfriend's name is World of Warcraft.

The drums of war thunder once again...

     Once you're hooked to World of Warcraft, you're hooked for life.  You can leave for a time.  You can say "I'm done.  You're no good for me, and you're not a person, so who cares what you think", but one of these days you'll run into her again, and you'll remember the amazing times you've had, and you'll just want to try it out for a little while.  Maybe play for an hour or two.  Check and see if your old friends still play, and what they're up to...

     ...And you're hooked all over again.  You play for an hour.  Just to check out your old character's stats and equipment.  You look at his gear.  Then you go through your inventory.  You can't help but remember the plans you'd had for those items before you quit.  "Oh yeah.  I promised Steamroller I'd enchant his gloves with +30 agility once I got the materials.  Sorry Steamroller."

Looks like you landed on your feet though.

    Then you think, "Well, maybe I'll just run one instance (a dungeon where you fight monsters and defeat bosses)."  You run that instance, but you see something new from a player.  "Wait, you're saying hunters can fire into melee now!?"  Then you look at your character and realize that he's different too.  New talents, new glyphs, new abilities.  Everything's changed.  This old girlfriend is different.  She's not a person but she changes and evolves like one.

     Then you're really screwed.  Because you remember what you really loved about that game.  The discovery.  The adventure of going to new places.  Abandoned mines, caverns under a city being controlled by evil cultists, a stockades been overrun by prisoners, a subterranean jungle filled with heathens worshiping a dead god.  You remember those old times, the wonder of exploration, and you think "What else can I see? I thought I'd discovered everything in this old game, but now there's more."  And you pack up your saddlebags, jump on your trusty steed and ride off into the unknown.

     You ride over the next hill to see what's there.  And you keep riding.  The wonder of discovering a new world isn't as great as the early days, but its pretty damn good.  You ride until you get lost in a new world again.  Your old friends are mostly gone.  Either they've moved on or they're playing as new characters now. It doesn't matter though.  You make new friends.  You meet an honorable warlock a mile under the ocean. he saves your life, and in return you help him complete a tough quest.  Later you ask him to run a dungeon with you and he goes.  Then he contacts you about an opportunity to kill a world boss. A great friendship has been born.

     But, alas, eventually you explore this new world too.  You reach a new limit, hit a new ceiling.  And after a while it starts to feel like a job.  You've already done all this, and you're doing it again just to get another character to level 85, and for what?  So they can do the same end game content that you've already done with a different character.  You turn the game off, planning to play again when you feel like it.  Only you never do.  Weeks go by and you don't think of it.  Maybe you have a new job, a new hobby, new friends, or, god forbid, a new girlfriend (or boyfriend, plenty of girls/gay guys play World of Warcraft), and in a month you get a bill for $15 and remember her.

     You think, "Well, I'll keep paying, I'm going to play again, just taking a break."  Another month goes by, still no playing.  Another.  After three months and $45 you realize this is getting silly.  You cancel your subscription.  After all, your characters are still waiting for you.  You can play again, just as soon as you feel like it.  No point in paying until then.

     Time passes and you realize you're better off without her.  $15 a month isn't outrageous, but you don't need the charge.  And you've got better things to do with your time.  You could focus on your work or your education.  Spend time with your family.  Get a real girlfriend.  Get married.  A plethora of better things to do with your time stretches ahead of you.  You don't need WOW: you never did.  You walk away.  Happy to be free of her clutches once and for all.

     Does this sound familiar?  You've done it before.  You'll do it again.  She's a lady you can't ever forget, and you can't say no to her forever.  One yes is all it takes, and the cycle will repeat.

Next week I'll talk about WOW again.  I'll describe how it was in the old days, and how its changed, for better and for worse.