Why MMORPG's can never be casual friendly in their current incarnation.
I'm a long time player of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games going all the way back to Everquest and to the latest incarnations of world of warcraft. What all MMO games except 1 of the ones I've played have in common, is that their mechanics alone make them unplayable unless you are willing to invest a certain amount of time.
The core experience of the "Pve Whoring" based games such as Everquest, Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, Vanguard and many more is the fact that you need a certain number of players, be it the old raids of everquest or the "small" 25 man raids world of warcraft offers. Now if the less intelligent developers and publishers behind these games could realize that basing a game off levels is a bad idea to start with, a lot of their problems would be solved. And it would also dawn on them that basing a players power on loot from PvE or PvP content encourages ostracism, elitism, and a host of other less desirable elements to become central to the game.
While I was raiding in world of warcraft (Naxx in vanilla, BT in TBC, and everything in naxx except the lol-king) I noticed that whenever I was in a raiding guild I automatically ostracized people, not because I wanted to really, but because I just did everything with my guildmates, so I basically hung out with the same 30 people on a server of thousands. Sure its multiplayer but its not massive is it?
In Star Wars Galaxies, to some the best MMO ever made, to some the spitting image of a broken game, ran by a company who didn't give a shit about its customers, to me a little of both. But the beauty of the game was that if nothing else its the most massive multiplayer game I have ever played to this day, because it was not working how the developers intended.
Pretty much all high end pve content was solable and myself and many others frequently did so. But since "Soulbinding" (An item cannot be traded to someone else) wasn't in game, quite a lot of the high end pve loot was available to buy in auctions. This meant that even if you personally happened to be unable to solo the "high end" content, you could make in-game money and buy the items from someone who could.
You could make money pretty much doing everything. I was a crafting buff myself, and as one of the top weaponsmiths on my server for over 2 years I made millions upon millions of credits since crafting was smack dab central to the game. Everything was made by crafters, from armor, to weapons, to vehicles, buff foods, buff packs (doctor made buffs), stim-packs (heals) and the beauty of it all was that you actually had to give up combat prowess in order to craft anything worth while.
This meant that your best equipped (yes equipment mattered but not that much) combat character, could also be a crafter, but this meant giving up combat skills. The game worked with "skill points" and each basic profession consisted of 4 trees requiring a combination of skill points (to train) and experience points (to be allowed to train) with a Master box set on top. The different levels of skill cost varying amounts of "skillpoints" depending on their placement in the trees. On top of every basic profession tree, a progression to the elite level for that tree.
Another fun aspect was the entertainers, these mostly non-combat characters often consisted of people who played the game to chat with other players rather than combat, and their role was very important as they could buff a players mind pool and heal battlefatigue and wounds to a targets mind pool.
Since a single player could go out and alone kill off quite a lot of the high end content, and because a lot of the non player characters who did drop good loot were spawns all over the galaxy with short respawn timers there was money to be made from selling loot. Which is how a lot of players made their money, enjoying pve and using their newly found toys in pvp, which was the end-game offered by the game. Now while I still believe it would be possible to make pvp the true end game in an mmo, provided you develop it well and continue to come up with interesting content for it, SWG failed quite badly offering worth while reasons to partake in pvp.
There was the base war but it never really had much of an impact on the game. Being a rebel in an Empire's world didn't really feel risky in any way, except the odd time getting popped overt rebel in the middle of a town full of imps, while alone... on a crafter....with no armor or weapon skills... and a bag full of uninsured weapons going up on a different vendor.
I know I talk about SWG a lot but I do believe that with Raph Koster at the helm, a star wars franchise, developers inspired by the original game, a publisher with funds and the patience to not rush release and the ability for the player to have a truly fulfilling experience with each and every skill and profession in game with the freedom and vision of the original SWG would make the playerbase of World of Warcraft look the population of Chernobyl (0)
Now back on topic. The idea of working together with other players only makes sense when its convenient, when one tiers content in a way that has a tendency to become more demanding on the amount of players, the amount of time each player can put into the game, each players ability with their character, the ability to focus through 10 – 40 minute long bouts of doing nothing but trying to get your abilities rotated in the way they do the most damage or healing, avoiding instant kill damage flying around constantly, managing aggro, and so on.
Alternatively one can partake in World of Warcrafts "ARENA" the gladiatorium where a players ability in pvp is measured, depending mostly on which class and talent specialization he or she has, their equipment, their partners, the hope that they can avoid or even gain an advantage through the many bugs featured in the arena, where the world of warcraft developers show that they couldn't balance on one leg, let alone a gigantic game.
I spent hours reading articles, spreadsheets, running simulators, highly modify my interface, planning out my character, I once spent 10 hours fretting over my talent specialization moving 2 out of 71 points around trying to figure out which spec gave the most dps.
Now I don't do that much work... at work. Lets not forget I wasn't being paid to do any of this, but it was understood that it was required and expected of a raider. As my old guild leader once screamed at me in a fit of rage "YOU WORK FOR ME, I AM YOUR BOSS".
And my paycheck was in the form of rare items, that made my character (not owned by me, but rented to me by Blizzard Entertainment and their 200 page End User License Agreement) powerful and admired. But really it holds no monetary value, it was a source of satisfaction until I realized I was missing out on having a real life because all my available time was spent on a fake life.
This combined with the rewards of such feats so to speak being the "best in the game" it makes it a requirement in order to compete in player vs player combat, there is also the aspect of such clear evidence of what a player has done in game, leading to both ostracism (of those with lesser gear, as they are seen as a lower class of player that has less value in the game), and direct abuse in the form of hateful comments in game, discussions on the forum turning into mass bullying of players on the official forums and in the virtual world.
I never saw this kind of behavior in SWG, sure there was outright hostility between imperials and REBELS (GO GO REBS) on quite a few servers, but this actually lead to much better gameplay because people would pvp, not for rewards, not for gold but for the glory and satisfaction of vanquishing an enemy. I still remember 12 hour pvp sessions with pure joy in from that game.
Since pretty much everyone could get the same gear, the same buffs, the same profession combinations, and so on, everyone could be roughly the same and people did pvp for fun there wasn't the same kind of ostracism. We'd start rolling out of Gatica (My guilds player city) on Dantooine with a squad of maybe 4 – 5 people and just jump from planet to planet, city to city, looking for trouble, grabbing up every rebel who wanted to come inviting them to come on one of many Vent/TS servers, We'd blow some bases, the imperials would come after us and soon the whole server would be fighting.
My server actually had to have enforced "non combat" zones because people were killing each other while shopping!
Gear can play a part but as long as it does, and is available in ways that does require a person to partake directly in long, excruciating sessions of statistics, spreadsheets, buff farming, and so on and it promotes a negative lets say "vibe" to the whole game.
When in addition to this a "master armorsmith" in world of warcraft doesn't gain much of a mastery by getting that title. It means a few more stats (added to make professions more worth it) if he or she is lucky maybe a few special items that are really good for their class,
To be continued soon.
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