Munchkins are creepy.
They dress in absurdly colored gear (where everyone of equal rank and function looks the same), move in herds, wear their ridiculous guild membership like thugs, celebrate boss kills with silly dances, and their faith in the Yellow Brick Road as the One True Path to enlightenment borders on bizarre.
Oh, and their singing is like fingernails on a chalkboard. Urgle.
But what of this “Yellow Brick Road” thing?
Questeth this way, braveth heros!*
*Brick road photograph from CGTextures.com, yellow “paint” added by Tesh
It leads to a Wizard of some sort, right? The guy with all the answers? Big floating, disembodied head with the power to grant wishes? Except, oh, wait. There’s this curtain involved. And some dude with machines pulling off an elaborate authority scam.
And whaddayaknow… in the end, he says that the Scarecrow’s brain, the Lion’s courage and Tin Man’s heart were there from the start, developed through the journey they shared with a girl who only wanted to get home to the people she loved.
Maybe, just maybe… it’s the people and the journey after all.
Dorothy found her friends when she ventured from the path. Her friends developed their own worth when they went even further off the path to save Dorothy. The Yellow Brick Road ultimately took them somewhere they didn’t even need to go.
Maybe playing a game is more than just being passively entertained. It certainly seems to me that the whole point of playing a game instead of watching a movie is to be an active participant, making decisions and solving problems. (Note: devs and players both have to take part in this.)
Maybe that road not taken really is the best road. It makes all the difference when we choose to be agents of our own destiny instead of just following the well-trodden path.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
This just got deep. Like. Woah.
Making decisions always sounds great, but the linear structure of games doesn’t always work well with this. Make the wrong decisions and you’re permanently screwed.
Contrast this with real life where decisions matter, and some are permanently bad (let’s play roll the STD dice!), but their effects can be dealt with. If I skip a class I can study more, contact my professor to see what I missed. If I sleep in late I don’t lose my job (unless I do this all the time), but there is a negative effect.
Until devs create a way for leaving the path to not be instantly fatal, or at least stop causing permanent disfigurement, then choices and decisions will be a good idea.
Maybe devs need to practice first by offering meaningless decisions, then working their way up.
Aye, choices don’t work for all games. Games as a medium, though, are perfect for the potential of choice making. You’re right also that designers need to make sure bad decisions aren’t game-breaking. It can be tricky, but I say it’s worth it.
“…but I say it’s worth it.”
Amen to that. 🙂
and the big challenge is not to only provide choice, but to make choices meaningful. many games offer us the illusion of choice but the outcome feels lacking either way.
But, but, but… WoW is the bestest game ever and every other game has failed compared to it to the point that so many have had to go free-to-play. So, obviously, copying WoW is the only way to make an MMO!
Or, you know, something like that.
What I think would be a fun quest mechanic for WoW would be to offer more than one objective for each quest. For example, a quest giver asks for you to complete one of three tasks. It could even cover all class roles, such as either heal these NPC’s or help kill these mobs the NPC’s are killing, or remove the threat of these mobs to help protect these NPC’s.
Obviously you couldn’t have every quest exactly like this, it would get stale pretty quick. But, if they would incorporate different objectives for each quest, it would add more depth to the game.
I think for something to be a game, there has to be uncertainty about the outcome – there needs to be atleast two outcomes and an uncertainty as to which will occur.
That doesn’t require decisions on a players part. It can involve pure gamble, like a game of snakes and ladders.
And people are probably going ‘Urgh!’ at a pure gamble game.
But what’s far, far worse to me? Where you make decisions during the so called game, but then you still end up at the exact same result anyway. I’d rather just roll and gamble than waste my mind making pointless busy work decisions.
An uncertain outcome, or it’s not a game.
Note, for more character-centric games, the uncertainty can be what sort of personal morality your character has by the end of the game. This might seem in your control, but a series of experiences might change what you end up as. Like in deus ex I tried to sneak and stun…but sometimes they were bad, and my life was at stake and…I filled them with bullets. So circumstances can make a character-centric game have an uncertain end result.
Now fly, my pretties, fly!!!!…..
Great metaphor! So TWoO was a precursor to MMORPGs as we know them today? o.0 Conspiracy!
But are quests necessarily to blame? Is the solution doing away with them, making more of them, less of them? We know that the only difference between a drug (beneficial) and a toxin (harmful) is dosage. I’d wager it is their implimentation, and the industry’s fixation on the buzzword ‘quest.’ Sometimes people need extrinsic motivators, and sometimes the intrinsic are desired. The artistry is in finding the balance that allows breadth and depth to both approaches of gameplay.
Probably people who hate quests only think of the ones they hated. And people who like quests only think of the ones they liked.
It’s probably a good idea to A: give up referencing the word ‘quest’ and B: as individuals we write about the moment to moment of gameplay we enjoyed (without using the Q word).
Since I notice sometimes people define what they like by the backward method of only saying what they don’t like.
Brilliant post and superb metaphor! I’m sure 98% of the Wow player base would not have the faintest idea of what you are talking.
The problem today is really the players themselves. Most of them are ignorant, incurious people who have no interest in anything that lies off the beaten track. The are like cattle that enjoy being herded down the greased chute of the golden path by rewards in the form of story and loot from the developers.
*chuckle*
I thought you might appreciate the idea, Wolf. 😉
Thanks for the comments, all! In all the fuss about these MMO things (WoW specifically) being “on rails”, I think it’s crucial to make sure that we blame not only the devs but also incurious players. I think both could do better.
…and remember, if we’re really going to talk about virtual worlds, it absolutely *cannot* be all about the devs. Players are the lifeblood to a virtual world, and if they aren’t pulling their weight, it will fail. Devs have to make sure the world/game rules work and keep the server stable, but the biggest factor in making the *play* of these things work really is the player.
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