Take the next step

Currently there are very few true hits in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) genre. Certainly they offer some variety and appeal to many millions of players, but they are far from flawless. In fact, I'd venture to say most of them are middling at best, in terms of overall quality. In many cases, their server stability is completely unacceptable, or they patch in fluff content for holidays rather than addressing very real issues with performance. Long-standing balance issues persist, critical bugs with the most basic of character abilities go unresolved, memory leaks take their toll, economic exploits remain open, unfinished zones and broken quest chains never seem to get their due attention, poorly implemented reputation and player versus player combat continues to frustrate... a veritable laundry list of completely valid complaints. Apart from the technical and content issue, the games are often extremely simplistic at their very core. The player delivers petty items from place to place with little reason and along the way they find themselves grinding out a few levels hoping to claim a superior item. Sometimes the grind is disguised with one carrot or another, but in the end, the stick still looms overhead. The moments of creativity that games have come to cherish have been dulled in favor of appealing to the lowest common denominator.

What do I mean by that? The features in current generation MMORPGs are often bleed from the past generation, simplified and polished a bit (often the same thing, mind you) to be re-released into the wild as new. Take the crafting system in World of Warcraft as an example. It is fairly easy to see a direct lineage from its uncles and grandfathers ranging from Horizons made a bit more user-friendly, to the gathering systems of Ultima Online, as well as others. There is nothing wrong with improving on the ideas of others, as there are only so many variations on a theme one can make and still achieve the same goal. Let us use EverQuest 2 as a counterpoint to the lack of creativity in crafting systems. Sony Online Entertainment has added a system in which you can produce four quality tiers of the same item, depending on how well you use your given skills to counteract flaws that appear during the crafting process. In addition to that, the quality of your source item, which often require their own processing, factor into the equation. As a result, different statistics appear on the finished product, each more powerful depending on the tier achieved. Sure, it is still button mashing to some extent, but it keeps the player engaged and active instead of clicking "Create All" and going off to watch the extended cut of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. To put it in other terms, the stagnation of features is due to the idea of, "If it worked well enough for them then, it will work just as well for us now."

Somewhere the genre has veered off track. The focus on making the player the hero of the story has taken a backseat to producing a virtual world with the intention of selling boxes and keeping players grinding away at a fifteen dollar per month pace. If all goes well, they'll beg for more of the same with a mildly different visual motif. Occasionally the player stumbles across an epic encounter which is quickly broken down into a formulaic encounter and documented across the web. Sooner or later, the enjoyment is siphoned from the content, the items are all acquired, and the world ends up with hundreds of the same optimized character builds. Not only is it far from heroic, epic, and enticing, it is an insanely tedious way to prove the path of least resistance is not the fun. One has to question why any player should spend hundreds of hours developing a character that will end up just like every other virtual persona. There is hope, however, as recent happenings in other genres lead your humble author to believe they may have taken the first steps on the path to the place MMORPGs originally wanted to go.

Steam is a content delivery system being used by Valve, the makers of the Half-Life franchise, to deliver episodic content to the frothing masses. Sin Episodes, from Ritual, will use the same technology. Forging their own path, Electronic Arts has planned "booster packs," sort of mini-expansions, for Battlefield 2. These three companies plan on delivering, for a modest fee, new episodes of their hit FPS sequels. Timely new content for a moderate price. Why not apply this method to an online RPG? Most MMORPG publishers already have the infrastructure in place to utilize a digital distribution process, as demonstrated by patch day in any one of them. Those that don't, have the option utilizing the BitTorrent protocol, which is uniquely suited for distributing large quantities of data. These systems could be bent to a new purpose by taking a sampling of Steam, a bit of Baldur's Gate, and tying them into the prosperous online worlds of Second Life, Everquest, World of Warcraft, Anarchy Online, Lineage, et al. Eliminate the monthly fee and release short bursts of new, fleshed-out content at a comparable rate. Sculpt a living online world geared toward small groups of players that are privately hosted and filled with true story arcs allowing players to finally become the hero promised in every MMORPG. Heck, maybe even hire a few novelists to lend their street cred to the project. A Song of Ice and Fire online role-playing game written by George RR Martin? I am so there.

Let's take a look at some of the potential benefits:

One of the largest barriers in producing a successful MMOG is the exorbitant cost of providing and supporting a virtual world. No longer would you be required to provide a massive live support team to address any issues that arise within the game world in real time, which also alleviates one of the larger stress factors for players. The cost of physically hosting many racks of servers is steeply cut as individual users can host their own private servers, in the fashion of first person shooters, real-time strategy games, and other role-playing titles. Server queues, poor latency, and having the entire player base affected by network outages and maintenance downtime quickly become almost unheard of. And to top all of that off, the growing pains of overcrowded servers, another stress factor, is thoroughly addressed with this alternative.

Which brings us to another point: in a game catered toward a more distributed audience, gamers can finally be rewarded with the chance to act out the role of the hero. More often than not, the über-guild that has been together since UO or EQ dominates the server firsts, leaving the poor casual or solo player to quietly sit in the shadows and brood. Instead of offering the taste of great achievement to the very few, any player can be the first to accomplish a great deed within their own environment. A random sampling of accomplishments could be summarized on a centralized community website for those that desire the recognition. Not only could everyone be the hero of their individual games, they could also truly impact the world. Without the need to force the stagnation of content to maintain a consistent experience for all newcomers, broad and meaningful changes could be put into effect on the world as consequences for any player (or non-player!) actions. Did a horde of orcs ravage the local farmlands, razing everything in their path on their way to storm the local fort? The fields can go from verdant to ash and remain that way. The fort could be turn asunder having been overrun by the orcish menace, or left standing, if battered, with the valiant local militia praising the victorious protagonist. All outcomes become possible, and permanent, without having to worry about negatively impacting other paying customers. Conveniently, this leads into the next point: I've mentioned permanence, but what about persistence?

In the current state of affairs, there are a few games that have offered persistent worlds in a private server format. Ignoring the knock-off private Ultima Online and Lineage servers, Neverwinter Nights comes to mind. There have been persistent worlds created far more elaborate than the retail campaigns, including crafting, grinding, and hundreds of other users. Freelancer, sometimes known as "Diablo in space," offered a persistent world where characters were locked to one server. This made it hard and frustrating to have a character progress consistently, but this issue could be addressed by storing character information centrally, similar to the ranked server program for Battlefield 2. While less complex, EA Games has created a system where players can frag it out on designated ranked servers to allow their statistics to accumulate, earn awards, ranks, and unlock new weapons. Creating this sort of central repository for persistent characters limits the potential for cheating while still placing a lesser burden on the publisher. As a side effect, players can compare themselves to others around the world. Just the beginning of a delightful package for the end-user.

The value to the end-user could be improved even further. They get a world designed to provide a play experience no one has really seen before, despite the dreams of many developers, as well as numerous additions to the traditional way of things. Taking the best of both worlds, the sweeping scope and elaborate landmasses of the MMORPG world can meet the intricate, epic plot lines their smaller brethren have attempted. Without the monthly fee, the game instantly becomes more accessible to a larger variety of players whether they were unwilling or unable to subscribe. Content can be consumed at a pace comfortable to even the most modest gamer and they can decide if they want more. Provide compelling content and the player base may be more loyal than die-hard Wheel of Time fans. Scary, eh?

In addition to that, without the need to worry about managing appropriate content for a captive audience, the player community can take it upon themselves to customize and improve the game. In the extreme example of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, the community took over where Troika went out of business and has continued to patch bugs, tweak balance, and generally contribute towards making the game itself that much better. A volunteer developer community is a beautiful thing to behold, to which any Open Source Software proponent will attest. Instead of voicing endless complaints (which is inevitable), players can take some measures into their own hands to help create the game they want. Opening a flow of honest communication between developer and player is, in the opinion of the author, an essential step in developing a successful game. One of the most valuable problem solving resources anyone can have is a legion of die-hard fans willing to donate their time and effort to a project and that can only happen when avenues of mutual respect are established. Not to mention, an alternative to the mainstream draws in a viral buzz which, in turn, garners more customers. Take, for example, the Firefox browser. There is a vibrant community of independent developers doing their part to improve the browser through plug-ins and extensions. There is even a precedent for this within the MMORPG world with Blizzard's adoption of UI improvements contributed by modders. The combined efforts of developers and fans lead to a vastly improved interface, something most people can no longer live without. The resources are there for anyone willing to take the chance of using them.

Lessening the risk of a prohibitively expensive failure could allow for the branching out into new styles. There are a few exceptions to the rule, such as PlanetSide, Eve Online, City of Heroes, and A Tale in the Desert, but the largely successful massively multiplayer online games have all been fantasy based. This leaves a huge gap in the available genres, cyberpunk, historical fiction, detective/noir and any combination among them, to be explored in a "safer" environment than the conventional MMORPG. By lowering the risk to themselves and investors, developers would be able to target more niche audiences, currently left somewhat disenfranchised. Most gamers have a favorite world they would love to see brought to life and may very well hesitate to jump on the online gaming bandwagon until it comes along. They want their favorite worlds available in a new medium.

The idea of blending virtual worlds, online and off, to creative a sort of interactive serial entertainment may seem to be difficult, but the technology is already in place. Despite that, no one has stepped up to the challenge of combining them into a single product. While none of it will be easy (and I'm certainly in no position to make such a claim), it is a path worth pursuing, if only to say, "We've tried this. It didn't work, but we gave it our all exploring something different." I suspect, however, that it could be a remarkable success; that it could be the right move to progress the world of online gaming, as well as something welcomed by gamers longing for changes in a currently uneventful genre. I'll be looking forward to the day that someone tries to unite the ecstasy of exploring a new something like Black Isle product (/me pours some Bawls on the sidewalk for the lost heroes of computer RPGs.) with the overwhelming awe of entering a virtual universe for the first time. If someone can work their magic toward this end, I'll be happily waiting for that next step.