Opposite Day

Un-Designing the Anti-MMOG

by Shayalyn

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It’s Opposite Day here on the Ten
Ton Hammer network, and we community managers are charged with the task
of describing the anti-MMOG; a game that would make for a nightmare
experience in a persistent online world. I have to admit this topic
leaves me feeling a little uninspired. One visit to the target="_blank" href="http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/index.php">official
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes forums and you’ll find plenty of folks
ranting about what they do and don’t want to see in Vanguard, or any
other game for that matter. Even so, I’m going to dive into the topic
(I’ve been told that I will be replaced with a typing chimpanzee if I
don’t) and try to uncover elements of the worst possible MMOG
experience.



Imagine a game where you enter and find a person standing around with a
big cheesy exclamation point over his head. You proceed to talk to this
person, and find that he offers you a quest. Once you accept his quest,
his exclamation point changes to a question mark and you’re on your way
to kill 10 sphincter beetles to help rid the world of its boundless
sphincter beetle population. Of course, you kill 10 only to find that
the little buggers respawn faster than you can bludgeon them to death
with your crude club.



Uh, wait...that comes perilously close to the World of Warcraft (WoW)
newbie experience, doesn’t it? Let’s take a different tack.



There are 4 things that truly ruin MMOGs for me, and they are:

• Excessive hand-holding (too-easy, too-soft gameplay mechanics)
• No soloing possibilities (particularly at early levels)
• Dull, repetitive, quests; or poorly designed quests that don’t
  engage the player
• Linear progression

Fortunately, I’ve never found all of those nasties rolled into one
game. Not yet, at least. WoW has excessive hand-holding and too-soft
gameplay, but you can certainly solo. Dungeons & Dragons Online
(DDO) launched without any significant solo play options, but its
quests are definitely intriguing. (And DDO wised up and added some
limited solo options a few months after launch.) I remember feeling as
though I was on rails in EverQuest 2 because the progression was so
linear, but I could solo, and there were enough compelling time-sinks
(who could resist harvesting?) to keep me addicted...for about 6 months.



Now, indulge me while I talk about my MMOG no-nos in a little more
depth.



I Wanna Hold Your Hand



Maybe it’s just me--or a lingering fondness for my first MMOG,
EverQuest--but I prefer a challenge. I grew up in Norrath, where men
were men, and women were women, and men were women...and gnomes were
nervous about it. There were no big exclamation points leading me to
quests; I had to find quest NPCs on my own. I had to find my way around
the world without the aid of maps, or even a working compass (at href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?set_albumName=article-illustrations&id=WoW_quest_NPC&op=modload&name=Gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php"> alt="WoW quest NPC"
src="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/article-illustrations/WoW_quest_NPC.thumb.jpg"
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 150px; height: 113px;" align="left"
hspace="4" vspace="2">least not until I got my Sense Heading skill
up). When I died, I had to trek out into hostile territory, dressed in
my newbie pajamas, to retrieve my corpse.



You want to hear about my newbie experiences in EverQuest? I fell off a
ramp in the tree city of Kelethin, while trying in vain to find my
guild master, and plunged to my death. I wandered around for nearly an
hour trying to locate my broken body on the forest floor so I could
retrieve what little gear and coin I had, but I simply couldn’t find
it. I eventually called upon a bard (which adds insult to injury, if ya
know what I mean) to help me track down my corpse. Not 15 minutes after
retrieving my stuff I went to talk to an NPC (to see if he had a quest
to offer me), forgot to hit the ENTER key so that I could start typing
in chat text, and the moment I hit the A key I was summarily introduced
to the cold hard turf of the Greater Faydark forest by the angry NPC
I'd just inadvertently attacked. This was my first lesson in key
binding.



Despite all the hardships and the difficulty, I’ve never found a game
more compelling than I found EverQuest. You can chalk that up to EQ
being my first MMOG, but I’ve known people who’ve joined the genre
using other MMOGs as a vehicle, and none of them have as much nostalgia
for their first game as I do for mine. EQ was hard, and we liked it
that way. No Carebears allowed!



I Just Want to be Alone



I’m all for community in MMOGs. I like the idea of interdependence
between the classes. Some of the best times I’ve ever had in-game have
been while grouped up with friends, and I wouldn’t change anything
about that...but don’t force me to group.



I was lucky enough when I played DDO to have some great guildmates
(here’s a shout out to the href="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=index&c=13">Ten
Ton Hammer DDO guild on the Sarlona server). Together, we made up
some fun groups, and I’d wake up my kids laughing at my teammates’
antics, particularly in DDO’s integrated voice chat. (Brockton pulls a
whole bunch of giants down on top of the group, and then attempts to
train them away. Sylesstra cries, “Ruuuuun, Forrest, ruuuun!” Brockton
replies, in slow Forrest Gump-ese, “Ah am not a smart man, Jen-nee.”
Stuff like that.) But when my guildmates weren’t online, or were
otherwise occupied, DDO was painful. Pick-up groups were usually
horrid, and there wasn’t a single time-sink to be found to whittle away
the minutes while waiting for a group to happen.



I have to be able to solo, particularly in the early levels of a game
when I’m not yet fully integrated into the server community, and I’m
still familiarizing myself with the game mechanics. But I like to be
able to do some meaningful soloing later in the game, too. It helps
kill the time when there are no groups to be found, or when I only have
a limited time to play. A game that completely cuts out soloing is
never going to make my A List.



Kill 10 Sphincter Beetles and Bring Me
Their...Antennae



In the name of all that is good and pixilated, please don’t make me do
bazillions of collection quests. I don’t src="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/article-illustrations/beetle.gif"
style="width: 75px; height: 58px;" align="right" hspace="4" vspace="2">
mind a few at early levels while I’m learning the game, but if I’m at
level 20 and I’m still collecting bone chips or bug antennae I’m not
going to be progressing to level 25. Instead, I’m going to be taking a
permanent vacation from whatever MMOG is making me play endless rounds
of fetch.



I want quests to be engaging. So often I find myself clicking through
the quest text the NPC is spewing and thinking, style="font-style: italic;">Okay, c’mon already, tell me what you’re
going to give me and what I have to do to get it. I hate that.
Sure, a simple mindless quest every now and then is fine, but I’m going
to be looking for a good balance of quests that have a real purpose,
and an arcing storyline. If I don’t find those in my game, I’m going to
find another game...simple as that.



Start Out Here, and then Go There, and
then Go...



One of the things I liked about EverQuest was that, at any given level,
there wasn’t just one place to go play. If you were into traveling
around the vast world of Norrath, you had plenty of interesting
options, particularly as expansion packs were introduced. Looking for
action at level 30? The Frontier Mountains, Great Divide, Split Paw
Lair, Castle Mistmoore, or Dawnshroud Peaks were all valid
options...and there were plenty more where that came from. There may
have been one place that was notorious for giving the best experience
or loot, but your choices were never limited if you wanted a change of
scenery.



I don’t like the idea of running around the same zone for 15-20 levels
before I get to experience something new. While other aspects of a MMOG
may hold me for a while, if I get too much of the same old same, I’m
going to be heading out to find excitement in another game, and it’s
going to happen sooner rather than later.



Fortunately for me, the game I’m anticipating most, Vanguard, doesn’t
seem to have any of the features I dread. The game won’t hold our
hands, but gameplay won’t be tedious, either. Although the jury’s still
out on how well we’ll be able to solo, at least Vanguard offers other
diversions like Crafting and Diplomacy. We’re told quests will be
engaging (and I can only hope there are no sphincter beetles). The game
progression shouldn’t feel too linear because we’ve been promised that
the world of Telon is enormous, with many places to go and see.



So, there you have it, my article about the anti-MMOG. All it really
proves is that no one game can be all things to all players, which you,
gentle reader, already know. Some of us love a challenge, while others
like to take it easy. Some of us enjoy being able to solo, while other
social butterflies can’t function without companions. There are those
who could care less about engaging quests as long as they get to beat
up monsters. It’s a big MMOG world out there, and as you travel
it...your mileage may vary.

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