Opposite Day

The most painful MMO Experience imagined…

This week for our Common
Content article I was asked to write about the “anti-MMO”, or the worst MMO my
imagination could conceive. There are a lot of things I can talk about for a bad
MMO, but I think it important to mention that in this case it’s best to talk
about general bad points and then take them to an extreme. After all; there’s
nothing quite like finding all the flaws in something and then magnifying them
about a hundred fold!

I’ll preface this entire article with the fact that I’ve been playing
Xenosaga as of late (since episode 3 comes out in a few months) and for those of
you who don’t know about it, Xenosaga has a system of game play that consists of
“take three steps, ten minute cinematic” so there is little game play. One of my
biggest pet-peeves in most MMO environments is the lack of storyline and actual
character development. With games such as World of Warcraft I know there is
little to no point in completing the difficult portions of a quest chain because
I know the item it gets me will not have any real benefit as I will eventually
be replacing it with. Since quests are the major plot development of any MMO, I
think it important to have evolving quests… but since we’re talking about the
worst MMO then I would have to say that the game should consist of one single
quest line that handholds you through the entire game. A full world tutorial of
a quest would make me go bonkers, so it would fit quite nicely in my horrible
MMO.

After the storyline of a game, there’s always the character at the center of
it. For a bad MMO to be greatly bad then it needs a system where the player has
minimal control over the development of his or her character and is only allowed
base physical features, racial selection, and a class… oh my apologies that
would be World of Warcraft’s character creation engine! If anything character
creation should be about picking complementing skills and distributing stats
about to make your character unique. A character creation method of simply
saying yes or no really doesn’t allow for real character creation. I eagerly
anticipate the release of Hero’s Journey character creation engine, because even
from my testing at E3 (may it rest in peace) there appears to be hours worth of
investment to be put in!

Now that I’ve butchered questing and character creation, lets take a look at
actual gameplay. Besides the obvious usefulness of the in-game U.I. it is
important to allow for modifications to be made and for players to customize the
feeling of the game and make it their own. A bad MMO would have no options for
players to make their own U.I. adjustments and would have statically set in-game
controls with very little options, so say goodbye to your scrolling combat text
and your neat little inventory sorter script. In an MMO world such as mine,
there is little to no room for divergence, and all players need to be the same,
and have the same U.I. and maybe we’ll even pack some kind of shirt they can all
wear while playing.

Combat is another major factor in any sort of MMO environment. With Warhammer
Online combat seems to have various different factors to it such as the
implementation of tactics and morale. Most bad MMO’s that I’ve played have
exhibited a very basic combat system where players basically grind their way
through by using a set sequence of moves dependant on timers and mana. If a game
is to have a good setup for its combat system then it needs to be diverse and
center of all different aspects of making characters useful, having them move
around and even use terrain to their advantage if possible. Personally I stop
enjoying a combat system when every fight feels the same and I just do the same
series of moves over and over with little or no change. Combat should not be a
grind in and of itself.

Another key aspect to any MMO is the crafting system. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  One of the things I love about crafting
is that I can make cool things depending on the items that I have found. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  One of the things I hate about crafting
is the hours it requires to find (grind) one thing to make a cool item. style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Since there are varying options that an
MMO has when it comes to introducing a decent crafting system; such as a player
based economy or possibly even an entirely crafting based MMO… style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Iron Chef the MMO, could be a contender
for worst MMO of all times, especially if we get Shatner onboard for character
voice acting.  “I… need… more… hair…
to… make… this… item…”

Finally the aspect of an MMO that really attracts one is the visual aspect to
the game. Some players don’t care about graphics one bit, I myself find that
graphics are an essential portion to any game and are required to be kept up to
date. For an MMO to have bad graphics, I am reminded of my attempt to play Dark
Age of Camelot that lasted about two hours. The reason I played Dark Age for
such a short time was because I was reminded of my days playing Diablo II and
how the graphics seemed so outdated compared to the standard games of the time.
Of course back when I played Diablo II they seemed pretty much cutting edge when
compared to other games of the time. Nowadays I think it is essential that games
have modernized graphics so that players can get 'hooked' by them and then move
on to the more standard gameplay. For an MMO to be bad in that respect there
would need to be gaping flaws with the graphics, glitches that result in spells
not looking right, and the occasional fall through the world... basically the
system World of Warcraft had in early release.

All in all a bad MMO needs to feel bad, play bad, handle bad and even look
bad. Thankfully all of the things I’ve mentioned are pretty much the opposite of
what I’ve seen thus far from Warhammer Online. So far Mythic seems to be
presenting a game filled with the qualities of a good MMO, and keeping the
‘Opposite Day MMO’ out of the picture. Hopefully this trend continues well into
the alpha and once beta time comes a knocking we can all enjoy a good MMO, and
not my horrible MMO conceived above.