May 11, 2007

Are MMOs too complicated?
By Michael Lafferty

Games have achieved graphic beauty, now might be a good time to look at gameplay elements

It has only been a scant decade since MMO gaming went from the domain of the MUDs (multiple-user dungeons) to the graphical powerhouses we are seeing nowadays.

MUDs were mostly text-driven and not as intricate as the massively multiplayer online games presented now. The modern era of MMOs really began back in the late 1990s. Meridian 59 (first published by the 3DO Company – which no longer exists) was the first commercial MMO to tap into the sword-and-sorcery culture. It was followed by Ultima Online in September 1997, EverQuest in March 1999, and Asheron’s Call in November 1999.

Hold on a moment longer; the history lesson is not quite over.

Anarchy Online took the high fantasy-dominated genre in another direction in June of 2001, and Dark Age of Camelot followed in October of that year.

The games were deep, involving and evolving and remain popular today. It really wasn’t until November of 2002 that the class of MMOs took a major leap forward in the eye candy department with the release of Asheron’s Call 2. Unfortunately, though, the game was fraught with problems and while both the developer and publisher were pointing fingers at one another, and the live team was scrambling to fix it, the decision was finally reached to close the game.

But AC2 was important. It was the bridge between the grind and the entertaining gameplay elements that inspired and consumed hours of gamers’ life with the voracious appetite of an inferno tasting dry leaves. If not for AC2, it seems unlikely that players around the world would have been lead down that path which eventually waypointed with World of Warcraft (Novermber 2004).

All that leads us to now, a time in flux, with the release of yet another triple-A MMO, and with the next wave gathering momentum offshore, so to speak, in studios of dev teams. Turbine was a studio that needed another hit. Lord of the Rings Online was a title that had been explored, developed, stopped and passed along. It fell into the laps of the team at Turbine and they labored to create a game that would garner intense scrutiny from fans of the books by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Games based on immensely popular licenses present a problem for development teams in that they have built-in fan bases just waiting to get their hands on the game, but you had better do it right because there are millions of fans that know so much about the license that deviating from the ‘true path’ will result in a maelstrom of protests.

Given that Turbine has released Dungeons & Dragons Online, and I didn’t enjoy it that much, I had trepidations about the treatment LotRO would receive. I got the game, played it and enjoyed it – a lot. While LotRO has its share of eye candy (though one could not say it is graphically the equivalent of an EverQuest II), what makes the game stand apart is that it is not overly complex. It is not built for the hardcore MMOer, though it could certainly cater to that faction.

Rather the game has a gentle learning curve and that puts the emphasis on adventuring and entertainment. Too often games feel that they have to overcomplicate things in order to challenge players. It is not a case of simply building tiered skills for a stronger attack, but rather putting so many definitions on a skill that it feels like it can ‘only be used when standing on one foot, at a 37-degree angle to the target, on Tuesdays, while hopping, and chanting the game’s theme song.’ Crafting sometimes seems to suffer the same fate – even at the lower levels of a skill. Rather skills should build in complexity. Even in combat arts, like martial arts, students learn the most basic skills and build but when they accomplish the more complex moves, they are no more difficult to pull off than the basic front kick they learned on their first day of class.

Some dev teams seem to think that a hotbar loaded with skill means content. It doesn’t; it simply means complexity. Players want to feel empowered, they want to feel like they are unique to the world (not clones), and they want to feel like their presence means something.

It seems, too often, that games are more about making the experience complicated so that players invest time learning how to control the game rather than get into the world and explore the wonder of it.

LotRO is the beginning of the next wave of MMOs. There are some big titles in the offing over the next months and years. It is hoped that the upcoming MMOs allow for wonder and not try to make the games so complicated that the beauty of what the dev teams have created is lost.

World of Warcraft has proven that simple can be good.

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