by Cody
“Micajah” Bye
In the United States of America, competition is a fierce thing.
We’re born, bred and raised to be competitive; we compete for
scholarships, athletic team positions, pep band placement, real estate,
spouses and much more. This country was created on the premise of being
better than everyone else. The founding fathers believed the colonies
were better than the British that ruled them, so they seperated
themselves and started a war over that ideal. Winners are what we look
for as a society, and it’s a fundamental belief in our
culture.
Video games emerged in a similar sort of situation; the first few games
were wholly based on the competitive need to score more points than the
opposing player. Pong
featured to opponents squaring off paddle to paddle in a simulated game
of a competitive sport, in this case ping-pong. As games continued to
progress, we saw different ways to compete – all-time high
scores, death matches, free-for-alls, capture-the-flag, timed events
and more – yet there was always this need to be better than
your opponent.
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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/12791"
title="WoW_Brewfest_004">
src="/image/view/12791/preview"
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style="font-style: italic;">World of Warcraft has
a terrific PvP experience, with free-for-all and arena matches.
Yet somewhere in that mélange of twisted desires to outscore
your opponents, a new sort of game appeared; one that wanted you to
complete the game to fulfill a story or unlock a secret. These
single-player focused games kept us riveted to our TV and computer
monitors, yet they eliminated several elements that made our
multiplayer games fun. Somewhere along the line these non-competitive
elements found their way into our multiplayer games, stripping them of
what many of us need to find fun in our games.
When the MMORPG was introduced to the gaming world, this sort of basic
gameplay was almost a standard for the roleplaying games in the
industry and was translated onto our MMORPGs. While
style="font-style: italic;">Everquest and
style="font-style: italic;">Ultima Online both
had player versus player combat, there was no way to know if your team
was winning or if you – as a player – were killing
more newbs than the next guy. There was no high score list, no way to
tell if you were at the top of your game or not.
But the world is a competitive place, and it didn’t take long
for some new kids on the block to take over the roles of the
“competitive” games and use that situation to
increase their popularity accordingly. Much of the success of the last
generation of MMOGs - in my opinion – comes
straight from the ability to see how competitive you’re
staying compared to other players in the game.
style="font-style: italic;">Dark Age of Camelot, Guild Wars,
and World of Warcraft
all hit upon this competitive nature in ways that really compelled
players to join in on the fun.
Dark Age of Camelot
– the oldest game of the bunch – was one of the
first games to truly introduce a competitive system with actual in-game
repercussions if your team was winning or losing. The Realm vs. Realm
system allowed players to fight on one of three server wide teams: the
Midgard, Hibernians, or Albions. If their particular team were solid
combatants, the whole realm gained certain bonuses that allowed them to
combat monsters with greater efficiency. Although leaderboards
weren’t introduced until later in the game’s
lifespan, there was a sense of overall leaders when the three different
factions juggled who owned the most keeps.
While Dark Age of
Camelot took the PvP element of EQ and UO to another
level, the World of
Warcraft sifted that PvP into its basic elements and
turned elements of its game into pure PvP joy. With its simplified
team-based encounters or arena combat scenarios, World of Warcraft
instantly caught the attention of players that were interested in
high-levels of competition. Despite PvP being not as integral a part of
the game as DAoC’s realm vs. realm combat, WoW holds its own
competitions very well and still maintains a solid PvE experience to
back it up.
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style="font-style: italic;">Guild Wars takes
competition to a new level.
Yet the most competitive game of them all – one whose entire
premise was based around PvP combat – is
style="font-style: italic;">Guild Wars.
Although there is a new kid on the PvP-focused block (
style="font-style: italic;">Fury),
style="font-style: italic;">Guild Wars still
maintains its strangle-hold on those gamers that are looking for solid
PvP based gameplay. With a huge variety of PvP scenarios, guild
battles, and competitive tournaments,
style="font-style: italic;">Guild Wars can
only be looked at as the epitome of the PvP experience. Although it may
not have the high-level PvE end game that DAoC and WoW do,
style="font-style: italic;">Guild Wars does PvP
and does it well. With over 4 million units sold on the PvP experience
alone, it’s not anything to sneeze at.
So what do all three of these games have in common? For starters, two
of the three (WoW & DAoC) have sold an absolutely tremendous
number of retail units. Between the two games, some thirteen million
players (if not more) have stepped into an MMOG realm to play with
their opponents. On top of that, all three of the games were popular in
their own day and age, while other less competitive games have fallen
by the wayside. All three also continue to hold strong against the tide
of time, with more content continually one the way.
Does this mean that every MMOG from here on out should have a
competitive component?
In short: Absolutely. Everquest
and Ultima Online
were both the first kids on the block, and they had it easy in terms of
the competitive marketplace. Gamers have learned that competition is a
good thing, and they’ve gotten a knack for it with these
recent games. If developers aren’t willing to put a
competitive aspect into their game, they’re almost destined
to fail.
If you look at the games released in the last year, which have survived
and which have floundered. The one game that made the biggest splash
when it hit the water was Vanguard,
yet the game is slowly dying. Why? A fundamental lack of
competitiveness. There were certainly other reasons that the game
failed as well - mismanagement, horrendous bugs, etc. - the lack of
competition was probably a contributing factor.
From now on, other developers should look at the product
they’re creating and determine how players can maintain their
competitive nature. If there isn’t a solid way to do that, a
solution should be implemented. If it’s not, the game is
destined to fail.
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