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.


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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.



href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/LotRO_Screenshots/Turbine_LOTRO_E3_2.sized.jpg"> alt="Battle"
src="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/LotRO_Screenshots/Turbine_LOTRO_E3_2.thumb.jpg"
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 150px; height: 110px;" align="left"
hspace="8" vspace="8">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 href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/LotRO_Screenshots/Turbine_LOTRO_E3_11.sized.jpg"> alt="World on fire"
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style="border: 0px solid ; width: 150px; height: 110px;" align="right"
hspace="8" vspace="8"> 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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