by Darkgolem on Dec 14, 2006
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. - T. S. Eliot
When designing MMO's, the developers often find themselves with contradictory concepts that they have to elegantly solve, while at the same time, make sure that the players are having fun. One of those concepts is exploration vs. socialization. Exploration allows players to roam the lands, find interesting creatures, NPC's, and geography. One of the fascinating things about exploration in MMO's is that first feeling you get when you enter an area that you haven't been before. The landscape changes, you start hearing the new music swell, the environmental sounds change from the twitter of birds and the clacking of insects to the menacing howl of wolves and the unholy groans of the undead. Instantly, your mood is transformed from a sense of familiarity to the anticipation of what's about to stare you down.
However, as the name of the game implies, it's a massively multiplayer online role playing game. The name repeats itself that it's all about social interaction. When it's multiplayer, you know that you will be dealing with other players, and role playing games are all about socialization, either with friends or with enemies.
Both aspects are innately a part of the human experience; they're complex and powerful needs. When the world is large and there are hundreds of places to explore, that tends to separate people from the majority of players, where individuals or their small groups only tend to run into other people randomly. Conversely, many people play MMO's because they can meet interesting people and band together to either solve common goals or engage in combat. The most memorable times I have had in MMO's have not been the quests. They were the times I met unforgettable people who have made me spit coffee on my keyboard laughing.
All too often the game takes an either/ or stance in creating a balance between exploration and socialization. The developers create complex quests and story lines and they create unique and stunning environments. The details on those environments are crafted to completely immerse the player in their world. The group goes out, they discover areas, they complete tasks, face challenges, risk their lives, collect loot and at the end and they receive experience for the endeavor. What the developers sometimes overlook is that the scenario I just described lacks a crucial element. Does the player come back to the social center (a city for example) and talk to other players about what just happened? Does the player give a second thought about what they just experienced before they go on to accomplish another task? All too often, the answer is no. Players can collect quests, go out, finish them and then move on to other quests. While they successfully solve the immersion of the world environment and the need to explore, they generally fail to give the players a reason to stop and socialize. Tending to be so focused on the goal-based needs of the players, they often forget to finish the human experience loop.
There needs to be an actual need for socialization. When I was playing Star Wars Galaxies, the dancer, musician and image designer professions all had valuable and unique skills that served an actual game need. In that game, I was a Ranger/ Rifleman. I would hunt by myself and I would hunt in groups. In the course of those hunts, I would be the consummate explorer, I would see a mountain on Dantooine, and I would decide that I would climb it to see what was there. On the way, I would encounter nasty enemies, I would defeat them and that would add to the sense of accomplishment when I finally made it to the top of the mountain. During those travels however, I would accumulate wounds and battle fatigue that only dancers and musicians could heal. I knew that I would have to go to a cantina, the only place where battle fatigue could be healed, and I would enjoy watching some of the most gorgeous Twi'leks in the galaxy dance my fatigue away. If I didn't take care of my wounds and battle fatigue, the accumulation would leave my hunter in less than peak hunting performance, and the risk of my failure and death would be much greater. The good entertainers would see me walking in the door, see the "master ranger" tag above my head and ask me how the hunt was going. I would chat with them as they healed my battle fatigue, I would tip generously and sometimes I would meet other patrons that I would meet and end up having a great time with. Sometimes duels would happen in the cantina, sometimes there would be a squad of NPC Stormtroopers dropping in to scan for Rebel operatives and sometimes there would be other randomness that would happen.
The cantinas in Theed and Coronet were always bustling with entertainers and battle weary players. Some would be the dark figure in the corner and others would be the flirty big spender. The developers wisely included an actual reason for socialization outside of combat to satisfy the need of people to meet people. When the developers eliminated battle fatigue from the game, the cantinas dried up and there were no longer entertainers there. They became ghost bars
where the only reason to go into one would be the occasional quest NPC that was located in the cantina.
One of the biggest mistakes that MMO developers make is assuming that people will come together on a mass scale for socialization for its own sake. There will always be people hawking their wares at the crossroads, there will always be people passing through for quests and there will always be people there for NPC services. However, if there's no social based profession that provides a unique and essential service to the combatant players, the socialization aspect of the game will end up being random and almost forced.
Turbine is developing a game called "The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar" and most of the people who have seen the movies or have read the books know of the pub "The Prancing Pony". This pub is iconic and is the setting of the beginning of one of the greatest stories ever. However, if there is no actual reason other than quests to visit The Prancing Pony, then its population will only be transient. There will be no lively entertainment, no jokes, no fights or brawls and very little interest other than starting and completing quests that surround that pub.
MMO's do an excellent job in finding new ways for players to engage in combat, they find creative solutions to make quests more interactive than
go here, kill that, come back. They are masters of creating worlds in which people can live another life. If the goal was all about XP, then there are amazing single player games, like The Elder Scrolls series that they can play. If the goal was all about creative quests, there is a lot more freedom and control in single player games that satisfy those needs. If the goal was all about PvP, there are several games where players spend hours in combat with other people. When I said that the developers are masters at creating worlds where people can live another life, they are masters of developing "how" people live other lives, what they often don't do is give players a reason "why" they want to live that other life. Otherwise, the players will move from one game to another as engines get better, graphics get better and there's a new intellectual property that is turned into an MMO (like Stargate, Star Trek, Conan
the list goes on). Exploration is essential to keeping the world interesting, and the developers are excellent at that. Socialization is essential to keeping the experience fresh and personal and all too often, it seems that part is overlooked and allowed to be random, brief and unessential.