This topic is a correllary to this topic. Just to be clear, I’m not trying to undermine jamasont’s discussion, but his topic made me wonder about the timeline of MMORPGs. If you’re like me and your introduction to gaming coincided with an introduction to MMORPGs, then you probably grew up with the genre. The genre has a history, with ups and downs, and new games building on the successes and failures of the last.
With that in mind, what are, in your opinion, some of the best individual design decisions implemented into an MMORPG?
(Please, please, for the love of Dwayna, do not turn this into another angry litany to ArenaNet’s betrayal of the Manifesto.)
Here’s my list.
- City of Heroes: Mission Architect
CoH was, and will remain well after its execution date of Nov. 30th, one of the few MMORPGs that tapped into its players creativity and provided them with all the right tools to express themselves. Mission Architect went one step further, and allowed players to create their own in-game missions. It had problems, sure, like every risky decision. For the first few months, players did nothing but powerlevel in Farming missions, but Paragon was pretty aggressive about shutting these down. Mission Architect became its own subculture in the community. The best mission stories received awards from the developers, and Paragon Studios hired at least one designer specifically because of his Architect Mission.
- World of Warcraft – Cross Server Dungeon Finder
One of the very few design decisions met with widespread applause from the WoW playerbase. Cross-server dungeons did have some downsides, such as the further dilution of server identity and a feeling of community, but it was a practical and elegant solution to the otherwise impassable gap between casual and hardcore players in experiencing dungeons. Cross-server dungeons made dungeons frequently available to nearly everyone, dramatically improved accessibility and opened up five-man dungeons to millions of players who would be otherwise excluded owing to server population, guild size or free time.
- Warhammer Online – Public Quests
Warhammer didn’t survive long, but its system of Public Quests intrigued developers enough to imprint itself into future MMORPG design. Champions Online unabashedly swiped the Public Quest system in order to give its world a little more life, a move later adopted by City of Heroes. Even GW2’s Dynamic Event system draws heavily from the design principles of Warhammer’s PQ’s.
Public Quests, in theory, encouraged group play while simultaneously giving a sense of dynamism to an otherwise static world. Events would pop up around the world, and you’d be rewarded in proportion to your participation with your allies. The concept challenged the old Questgiver content system and I’d like to believe that, in the future, we’ll see more dynamic, open world quests rather than static interactions with individual questgivers.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic – Personal Stories
Say what you will about ToR. It’s hard to argue that it forced a debate on the role of narrative and storytelling in MMORPGs. Stories were usually considered the purview of single-player RPGs, not MMOs. Quest texts were superfluous bits of lore you skipped. It didn’t matter why you had to collect 10 bear pelts; you needed the XP to level. ToR challenged that, for better or worse, and made a solid case in favor of narrative, personal stories and characters in whom their players could invest genuine emotion.
It’s a discussion for another topic on another day, but I firmly believe that storytelling is absolutely central to a good MMORPG. We just haven’t figured out quite how to do it yet, but I imagine that when we do, it’s going to be a mix of the branching arborescent dialogue model of The Old Republic, and the more organic emergent storytelling of EvE.
