I loved the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. Sure, it could have been better, but the core concept and Murray’s performance proved to be both entertaining and thought provoking. So… yeah… MMOs. In a world where nothing major really changes (at least, not because of player actions), and where completing a quest makes you the Hero of the Day!!! for all of ten minutes before the next schlub turns in the same quest, I think the “infinite loop day” is a relatively relevant concept.
It’s even fun, for a while. Humans like patterns, after all. We like the comfortable, rote, repetitive recitations of life. We like that the Deeprun Tram always goes back and forth between Ironforge and Stormwind. We like that mobs respawn in a few minutes, so that we can get the experience, quest item, or loot drop that we missed (or are getting again). We like that Onyxia always does pretty much the same thing every time she spawns for us, since if she started exhibiting some real AI, she’d eat our healers, squish our DPSers and pick her teeth with the tank.
But what of story? What of the lore that makes these virtual worlds so interesting? Are stories that don’t really go anywhere just as interesting as the grand tales of old? This post is what got me thinking a little more concretely about story, and it’s a good quick read, with some good comments:
If it’s not obvious from my other writings, I’m a lore goob. I love the art and the storycrafting that has gone into the WoW universe. I’d probably geek out over LotRO, GW, and maybe even EVE if I let myself burn the time to do so. (AoC doesn’t interest me, however. I don’t like gutter content.) To me, a fair dose of why I’m even interested in WoW (despite my many misgivings about the business model and idiots online) is based in the lore. It just seems ripe for good storytelling to me. Yes, it’s cartoony, yes, it’s a wee bit stereotypical, yes, the Forsaken make me a bit queasy. It’s still a well-crafted bit of work, and one that I’m happy to delve into.
And yet… I can’t help but think that as an MMO, it’s really not quite what I’m looking for.
In WoW, nothing really changes all that much. There are all these fascinating little stories driven by the plight or triumph of NPCs, and plenty of opportunities to be hailed for killing stuff, but nothing really changes as a result of player actions. Ransacking Stormwind as a Horde raiding band doesn’t stop those filthy humans from breeding, and exorcising the Undercity doesn’t get rid of those creepy corpsewalkers. Killing the local wildlife doesn’t really make the town safer, since those mean nasties regenerate in a few minutes. (And patrol just outside of town, waiting for the next battle.)
There’s a balance that needs to be struck between the familiar patterns that keep players feeling powerful, and the crazy, dynamic content that can come when the world really starts to feel alive, and actions have consequences, for better or worse.
I’ve had an idea rattling around in my head for a “periodic MMO” that can try to blend the “cyclical experience” with giving players the ability to affect the world. Yeah, everyone and his dog and his dog’s shampooer have MMO ideas these days. Call this an intellectual exercise in design, if that makes it sound better.
At its heart, the design would simply be a world where players can change things, but the world gets “reset” by a periodic cataclysm that wipes out all of the petty player efforts. Characters are all destroyed (except for those sooper sekrit special story characters), but their “essence” carries through somehow, thus preserving player time investment. I’m cobbling together concepts from games such as Dark Cloud, Final Fantasy, Dinotopia (the original books, not the subpar spinoffs in other media) and Harvest Moon, with a healthy helping of “well that’s weird” thrown in. The hope is that by doing a story-driven wipe every few months (the frequency might need to be tuned), players can be given a chance to run amuk for a bit, but still wind up starting the next cycle more or less on the same foot.
Each cycle would have its own story, and the whole “periodic wipe” mechanic would have an overarching story. It would require more work and even some in-game GM manipulation, as well as a tight rein lest any players get too out of hand, but I just can’t help but think that it might wind up to be a bit more fulfilling than “turn in Van Cleef’s head” right after you saw that other dude do the same thing. It should also allow for more interesting storytelling, since things can actually change over time.
Even so, my own little repeatable world is just extending the time frame of repetition. Is there a way to make a world that changes and evolves without the “reset” mechanic? Is it possible to balance the power properly, and make skill a prime key in success, rather than hours in-game?
In sum, then, Groundhog Day is good fun. Even so, it’s pretty unique among movies. Why, then, are we as players and designers content to let such an overwhelmingly static experience be the mainstream of the MMO market, when it barely lives up to the vast potential of a virtual, persistent world? It’s a fun little treadmill, but when do we get to take a walk through some real wilderness?
Image taken from here, unknown whom to credit:
I really love the Groundhog Day metaphor for MMOs. I’ve been using it off and on for the past few years but I never got around to doing a full blown article on it. It’s good to see that other people seeing the striking similarities between that excellent movie and most MMOs today.
Like Bill Murray in the movie, we as players relive the exact same scenarios in our MMOs. The encounters stay the same (the NPCs don’t learn) but we keep learning and improving until we finally win. This is the pattern and fatal flaw of MMOs today: they are predictable and non-dynamic.
The problem with that type of MMO structure is that once players learn the encounter boredom and tedium can set in. The cure seems to be more content and more expansions which really don’t address the fundamental issue: a lack of dynamic content.
Raph Koster talks about in his book A Theory of Fun for Game Design how the brain loves to deconstruct patterns which are found in games. Once the brain figures out the pattern the fun is over. This is why games like chess have remained popular for hundreds of years — the player is presented with different opponents who provide a myriad of new and varied challenges. The result is that the player is never bored and the brain experiences the euphoria of constant learning. This also explains part of the fascination and allure those players that enjoy player versus player content — they always get new opponents who present them with new tactics and strategies.
I can’t help thinking that the Blizzard dev team in their heart of hearts can’t really be happy with the non-dynamic direction that WoW has been taking all these years. It’s a MMO with training wheels on; a kiddie MMO. Surely the powers that be at Blizzard would rather be involved in a virtual world that is constantly fresh and exciting instead of the stale and tepid world of Azeroth.
I agree with your observations on the utter lack of persistence in most MMOs. It’s frankly appalling how little persistence there truly is when NPC’s are nothing more then bowling pins that come up immediately after being knocked down. All we can hope for is that someday somewhere a MMO company will realize these shortcomings and create a true dynamic virtual world that is left to evolve or de-evolve on it’s own. That’s the kind of MMO that I want to be a part of.
Great article!
Thanks, Wolf! Aye, Raph’s “Theory of Fun” is something that I keep coming back to when I ruminate on this sort of thing. It seems like there needs to be a balance between giving players that sort of pattern digestion and the dynamic random content that can maintain interest.
Your chess analogy is very apt, and it reminds me of Cambios’ article suggesting that “players are content”. It makes a lot of sense, since a computer system is only ever going to be as interesting and dynamic as the engineers and artists can make it. If you get the players involved, either explicitly or via a layer/shell of game mechanics, they can help shoulder the burden of “content creation” as they make the world interesting and alive. That means giving players power, but as time goes on, I think that will almost be the only way to make MMOs live up to their potential.
That’s why I wonder about the “cyclical reset” to keep things from getting too degenerate. If there’s a way to give people enough time to have an effect on the world, but not enough time to completely grief other players, I think a neat balance could be struck between an initially level playing field and player power to alter that field.
Like any multiplayer venue, especially an anonymous one like the ‘net, the potential for griefing Killers is something that needs to be compensated for. That, along with the drive to Achieve is what seems to be tricky to balance.
I think player created/generated content is the future of MMOs. Currently, nothing is really required of players — they pay their monthly fee and show up ready to be “entertained”. Players have a consumer mindset these days.
MMO companies really need to start letting players get involved more in their virtual worlds. Let players host events and give them the tools to manipulate and change the world they live in. Of course we have to worry about griefers but I think even griefers can play an important role in virtual worlds as outlaws/scapegoats.
Regarding resets, there is nothing better for me then being able to roll a character on a fresh server. Everyone is low level for at least a few days and a sense of community can erupt when this happens that is sometimes missing on older established servers where the gap between rich and poor, geared and ungeared is vast.
Resets can once again level the playing field if they are done right. I would use things like natural disasters, plague, famine and pestilence as mechanisms to help bridge those aforementioned gaps.
Lots of things to discuss here and I could go on for hours and hours!
Well, hey, fire away!
Funny you mention natural disasters. One of the things that I was thinking for my cyclical design was a series of natural disasters that periodically scour the world, whether it’s be fire, earthquake, flood, or what have you. It would be enough to change the landscape and wipe the occupants, but not enough to wipe all vestiges of civilization. That there would be ruins and such from previous generations would be part of the point of exploring the next cycle. Canny adventurers might even find ways to cache things away in places that might survive the wipes. Of course, lower life forms might get to it before the adventurer comes back…
If you read up on the lore of Magic the Gathering’s Lorwyn and Shadowmoor duality (a plane that periodically shifts from light side to dark side and back again), you might see some of where my ideas on surviving through the cataclysm come from. I didn’t dig too deeply into that story, myself, but the concept of a world-changing blight is interesting, and the idea of finding ways to slip through mostly unchanged is intriguing to me.
I like the idea of generational content as well. Historic lore is interesting when the devs tell the story well, but if players have the ability to create some of that history and have it affect gameplay, well… that’s just sweet.
It’s a bit like Legend of the Five Rings, the CCG. The designers ran tournaments, and future story expansions and game mechanics depended a bit on what “clans” were represented and how they fared in said tournaments. Even individual cards could be pivotal in the direction of the game. It made for compelling storytelling, since the players were literally helping to write the story, not by writing fan fiction, but by living the history.
[...] you can also play WoW as if it were Groundhog Day, and just play a series of ten day trials. You’ll never breach the hard level 20 cap or [...]