by John Hoskin on Nov 21, 2007
Welcome to the 712th Edition of Loading...
If you aren't reading this in your e-mail, you could be. Sign up.
Are you looking for the latest industry headlines? Look no further.
Daily Column
10 new MMOG articles today! 183 so far in November!
Let's start today off with some humour. Blizzard has released two new World of Warcraft commercials featuring William Shatner and Mr. T. I pity the fool that doesn't watch these ads.
A couple of days ago I mentioned the heavy death penalty that was levied by the first publicly popular MMOG, Ultima Online. Loading... faithful fired up their own message thread and are hashing it out with little interference from me.
Ultima Online was the first publicly popular graphical MMOG, but it wasn't the game that brought the genre to the masses. That trophy belongs to the original EverQuest, which itself had a very heavy penalty for finding your hitpoint bar empty.
Strangely, since it was evident that EverQuest was built on a MUD (Multi-user Dungeon) foundation the EverQuest penalty was not as harsh as that found in DikuMUDs ( textual adventures) that were running at the same time. In most DikuMUDs if you died you lost a level. I'm not sure if LPMUDs had the same setup as I didn't play any of those, but it seems fair to assume that their death penalty was equally as harsh. LPMUDders fill in the blanks here please.
EverQuest launched with a lighter death penalty than that of Ultima Online and a far lighter penalty than that of its MUD predecessors. When you met your demise you lost experience (it was possible to lose a level) and had to do a "corpse run" if you wished to reacquire the items that were on your carcass. Your naked character spawned at you bind point (usually a city) which could be a very, very long way from your corpse. If your corpse was in a difficult to get to or isolated spot you were in for a bit of work to get it back. That said, some of the best stories to come out of EverQuest involved corpse runs.
When EverQuest launched you could not /drag your corpse. Where you died is where you died and if that was under the feet of a dragon then you'd better hope that you could put together enough friends to kill the dragon (unlikely), or find a class that could get in under the dragon without being seen and give them permission to loot your corpse. There was no guarantee that the player looting your carcass would give you the items, but many times you had no choice. The community policed the scammers and the game moved forward. Death was miserable, but the rewards from encounters in dangerous areas were so lucrative that players frequented them, even though they feared dying.
The crux of the issue as I see it is simple, any death penalty is an emotion amplifier. The harsher the penalty the more the emotions evoked by a game are amplified. If feelings of success or triumph are the reward that keeps a player attached to a game then the real question for a developer is how to best balance the risk of an encounter with the reward or in the case of failure the penalty.
Should the death penalty change based on the risk involved? Should the penalty for dying on a raid to a boss monster be less than dying to a rat in the newbie zone?
Some other questions:
Is a death penalty required short of giving a "time" penalty to run back to the encounter?
How else can a developer amplify the emotions that make gaming such an attractive hobby?
Do tell, this is starting to get interesting.
Comments, questions or naughty pictures? Hit the forum or hit my mailbox. --Boomjack
New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today
EverQuest 2: The Tribunal Deity Quest and Miracle Guide Interview With The Space Time Development Team Lord of the Rings Online: Bartering in Evendim Lord of the Rings Online: Guide to Bree-Land Tabula Rasa: Community Team Q&A #2 Tabula Rasa: Guide to Cumbria Research Vanguard: CIS Guide #9 - Immunity Potion Warhammer Online: Public Quest Boss - Vampire Lord Neborhest World of Warcraft: Zul'Aman Guide - Jan'alai Encounter World of Warcraft: Combat Stats ExplainedHot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to.
Tabula Rasa: Community Team Q&A #2 Book Review: Legend of the Syndicate Interview With The Space Time Development TeamReal World News
It's Outside The Environment [Thanks Katie]Thanks as always for visiting TenTonHammer.com
- John "Boomjack" Hoskin and the Ten Ton Hammer Team