Casual Game, Hardcore Fun

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Updated Mon, Jan 05, 2009 by Shayalyn

Casual Game, Hardcore Fun

By Shayalyn

I cut my MMOG teeth on EverQuest, way back in the day. And let me tell ya, sonny, we didn’t have it easy back then. A lot of the time, we had to hoof it, making 10-20 minute (or longer) runs or tedious boat rides just to reach our adventuring group or raiding party.

In EQ, dying hurt. There was none of that soft “experience debt” stuff when I was a young ‘un. No way! If we died, we watched a good-sized chunk of our hard-earned experience vanish from our exp bars. Sometimes, we’d lose a level, and any spells we’d gained with that level. Hours of time spent playing could disappear with one fatal swipe from an orcish axe. And when you died, you left a corpse, and on that corpse was all your stuff—stuff you worked long and hard to attain. If you didn’t get back to your body and fetch your belongings within a certain amount of time, your body would rot and your armor, trinkets, and hard-earned cash would be gone for good.

And the learning curve was steeper, too. If you didn’t RtFM (that’s Read the Frippin’ Manual, for the uninitiated), there was no goody-goody tutorial to lead you around by the hand and show you the ropes. Oh, no—what I got for a tutorial was a few sadistic higher level friends who delighted in playing a little game called 101 Ways to Get a Newb Squished.

And you know what? With the exception of those long runs and boat rides, I miss it. I miss the challenge. I miss actually fearing death because of how far it could potentially set back my progress. Back in the early days of playing EQ, I might have longed for an easier game…but now that I’ve been there, and felt the pride that comes with accomplishment through some truly difficult challenges, I can’t imagine going completely soft.

But modern MMOG gamers don’t often have the sort of time to commit to a game that a certain select (read: obsessed) bunch of gamers such as myself dedicated to EQ. Many of today’s gamers want to be able to log in for an hour or so and make noticeable progress; they don’t want to have to devote themselves to 5-hour Mountain Dew-fueled marathons on a regular basis in order to advance. And yet, they want a game that offers enough depth that they’ll want to keep coming back for more, and paying those monthly subscription fees.

In my opinion, the most crucial task facing Turbine in the development of Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (LotRO) is figuring out how to balance challenge and fun—how to meet the needs of a growing contingency of gamers with limited playtime, and yet not alienate those gamers with a lot of time to invest in becoming the best of the best.

One way to keep the fun in gaming without eliminating the challenge is to cut out long runs and boat rides. Travel may have been an intricate part of Tolkien lore, but when players can assemble for an adventure quickly and easily, they’ll have more time to devote to playing the game instead of the tedium of getting from point A to point B. EQ eventually eliminated travel-time woes by adding the Plane of Knowledge, which offered easy access to most zones. EverQuest II implemented ship’s bells; an adventurer need only run to the nearest dock and ring the bell for instant transport to their zone of choice. You’ll also see riders flying around WoW and EQ II on griffons; a much faster means of transport than running on foot. From what we know of LotRO, there will be fast travel options, but players must arrive at their destination for the first time on foot—a perfect way to balance lore and immersion with the need for expedient travel.

Some games in development, such as Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, by Sigil Games Online, plan various levels of content: some will be best suited for solo players or small, casual groups; some (the majority) targeted toward full groups with more time to kill; and another small portion reserved for hardcore raiders. It’ll be a good trick if Vanguard can pull it off. EverQuest II tried, but, at least in its early days, failed to produce enough content to keep solo and casual players satisfied. It’s apparent that Turbine must strike a delicate balance when it comes to anticipating the needs of their player base, and creating content to suit them—not every Tolkien fan who wants the chance to role-play a hobbit is going to also fancy themselves a hardcore raider.

And what of death? I think it’s safe to say that death as we knew it in EQ, the kind

where players suffer significant experience loss and are capable of losing a level, is a thing of the past. Players don’t want to endure the frustration of watching a chunk of their hard-earned exp disappear. The trend in current games is the experience debt system, where players suffer diminished experience gains for a period of time while they repay “debt” from a recent death. Some would argue that the set-backs players endure as a result of the debt system are roughly the same as experience loss…and yet somehow the penalty doesn’t seem as harsh. It seems as though Turbine is going soft on death with LotRO. "For the most part there really is no 'death;' instead, your character is 'defeated' and regains consciousness elsewhere, in relative safety,” says Jeffrey Steefel, Executive Producer of LotRO, “How your character got there is left up to your imagination. Whether there will be a penalty for losing your fight is still on the table."

All these things—faster travel; content designed to accommodate different playing styles; and less grueling death penalties—can make a game ultimately more playable. Despite the fond memories I have of my no-pain-no-gain trials in EQ, I’m not against player-friendly innovations. They don’t diminish fun; they simply make the game more accessible to a wider audience.

In the end, what makes a game fun is depth of content, intriguing quests, and challenging combat that forces players to rely on their knowledge and the ability to think fast on their feet (or their character’s feet, at least). Will Turbine provide those things in LotRO? I believe they’re perfectly poised to do so. Careful observation of the failures and successes of LotRO’s predecessors should ultimately lead to success.

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