Garriott Brothers on the future of MMOs

[Monkey]

Found this interview with Richard and Robert Garriott (of Ultima Online fame) linked via Penny Arcade:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/42/3

Some really interesting thoughts both on gameplay and on the business models of online gaming. Here's a quote talking about the basic gameplay structure of MMOs:

While some are content to rest on that particular design until the end of time, you can sense a bit of dissatisfaction in Lord British when he says, "But, fundamentally, I think it's not particularly elegant." Looking to the future, and including his own Tabula Rasa, he sees developers learning from and expanding beyond this model. He continues, "Most of the developers who have built one successful online game realize the error of their ways and now have moved on and said, 'Okay, what can we do that's bigger and better than that?' And so some of these answers, which to me should sound pretty straightforward these days, are things like, as opposed to demanding a level grind where the only way you can feel successful is to be doing it for 12 hours a day, we've got to create games where people can have 30 minute play cycles. You get in, you get out, and [you] don't feel that while [you're] out, [your] friends are going to level beyond [you] to a point where you can't even play together anymore."

[Mithrandir]

Great interview and the Garriots had some surprising answers... although it did make me kind of nervous when Richard said that he thought selling virtual items for real-world money was a good business model. If you play a subscription-based game, the company is encouraged to put enough good content out there that you feel it is worth your time and money to play this game. If they adopted a virtual-items-for-real-money business model, then all they are encouraged to do is release a new best sword every week.

I think that the real future of MMOs lies in the PvP and not in the PvE. Admittedly, I always hated PvE in MMOs (whether it was the main focus, or like in DAoC, an significant obstacle before reaching the PvP) but I feel as though people are going to get tired of beating on steadily respawning monsters to make a XP bar slowly crawl up (or down, or horizontally depending upon the game:)). A lot of the people I know who started out in EverQuest don't play MMOs anymore because they just got tired of every PvE game being the same. Obviously you can then point to WoW's success as a PvE MMO, but a huge percentage of people playing WoW are fist time MMO-ers and I have been hearing rumblings from my friends for a while now about how WoW is getting extremely dull. PvP MMOs, on the other hand, tend to be dynamic experiences - every single day you log in you are fighting different people in different way in different situations.

I played DAoC for a couple years almost every day. I ran to Emain (for the uninitiated, a relatively wide open PvP zone that was easily accessible by all three realms so 90% of the PvP took place there unless there was a big relic raid going on) every day with basically the same 7 other guys for a couple years and did not get bored until Mythic released an expansion that added a *ton* of required PvE to the game.

Maybe I'm just an anomaly though:)

[Monkey]

Great interview and the Garriots had some surprising answers... although it did make me kind of nervous when Richard said that he thought selling virtual items for real-world money was a good business model. If you play a subscription-based game, the company is encouraged to put enough good content out there that you feel it is worth your time and money to play this game. If they adopted a virtual-items-for-real-money business model, then all they are encouraged to do is release a new best sword every week.

He talks a lot about the need to design the game for that, though. Second Life is an example of an MMO where the company makes money selling virtual items and it's not a "new best sword" situation. It's a money, real estate, etc., situation. It's possible to not make the mechanic game-breaking if you do it right.

[Nystul]

A couple years ago, I discovered a game called "Pokemon". This game had so much content, it felt like I could play forever and never run out of things to do. Life was good. ...until a few hours later, when I realized that all battles in Pokemon followed one of a few formulas: rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, paper beats rock (or something like that). Suddenly I realized that no matter how many different sizes, shapes, and colors of scissors I discovered, they would always just be scissors to get smashed by a rock of appropriate strength. And the real point of the game was not figuring out clever ways to beat scissors, but rather to spend tons of real life hours beating different scissors the same way over and over again in order to find some rare random watchamacallit and obtain status amongst my real-life peers as the Pokemon Master.

It's all about the guts of the game. If the game is inherently fun, additional content is not needed (Starcraft, anyone?). If the PvP is truly balanced and dynamic, you could have an MMO with a few unique styles of battlefields and be done with it for years. If the PvM is inherently clever, with each enemy offering a unique challenge to be solved in a variety of subtle methods (in the case of an MMO, presumably requiring the teamwork of tons of players all reacting cleverly and dynamically to the situation), a few hours of content could last a lifetime.

If the game is inherently motonous, additional content will only appeal to those who want to be Pokemon Masters. Hence, it is pretty clear that offering in-game status in exchange for real life money is designed to appeal to exactly the same mindset as offering thousands of hours of grinding at a monthly fee... pay us enough money to keep generating pointless content and you too can be a Pokemon Master and gain the envy of your peers. This way, creativity at the gaming companies is only required from the graphics and audio departments. Since this exactly what so many people want from a game, who am I to comlain?

[Mithrandir]

I wonder if it's even possible for new MMOs to break in now...

http://www.mmogchart.com/

[Dako-ta]

Hi,

That was an interesting read, as was the article on the downfall of Origin linked at the beginning of it:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/14/4

Lol, I couldn't even retrace my tracks today, but somehow I followed a series of links and ended up at:

http://www.ashenempires.com/index.asp

Has anyone played this? It's possibly free to play (the site is a little ambiguous on the subject), but is at least free to download. I've started downloading the client, but don't plan to try it out immediately, as I just got involved in a new game a couple of weeks ago and am not ready to try something new yet.

The screenshots seem halfway decent, better graphics than some other free MMORG's I tried briefly this winter that didn't appeal to me (Wyvern, Ogre Island, Neveron). But then, cutting-edge graphics aren't my highest priority in a game.

Mithrander, that chart was mind-blowing - WOW has 50% of the MMORG market? Incredible. Thank's for showing that.

Nystul, interesting observation. I'll just point out that some people simply won't "make the connection" - they will be totally oblivious to that pattern of battle - and of those who do consciously realize it, some won't care anyway.

Regards,

Dako-ta

[Frag]

As an ex-City of Heroe's player, the thing I remember most fondly about the game was it's complete lack of a soundtrack. That's right.. the LACK of one. That lack inspired the CoH audience to develop and support internet radio stations that revolved around the game. One of the more popular current radio stations has since come to support all NCSoft titles, including weekly updates on Tabula Rasa. I've utterly fallen in love with the primary design element of the game and have been eagerly awaiting it's release, but until your post today I somehow didn't connect the the Garriott Brother's from TR to the originators of Ultima Online.

Thank you for that link, Monkey.

Cheers,
~Frag B)