By far and large, the design ideas I throw out over here at Of Course Ill Play It are iterations of existing concepts and notions within the classic MMO. There is a reason for this. I am a huge fan of give the players a lot of something they know, and a little of something new. While I like as much as anyone the idea of revolution and innovation, the truth of the matter is if you throw something completely foreign and new to a playerbase that has preset expections, you are setting up a recipe for fail on an epic scale. And the MMO landscape is littered with the corpses of those that have gone that path. So much of my ramblings are about ways we can take things we know, and make them better. This however, is not such a post. This idea is so radical *I’m* not even sure it’s a good idea. But it’s a notion that’s been kicking around in my head for some now, and hell they don’t pay us the big bucks to always sit around and play it safe (okay truthfully no one pays me at all), so let’s throw this out and think about it.
The Golden Age of TV
Back in the heyday of serial tv programming, from the 50’s all the way up through the 70’s, there was always one absolute mandate for tv series writers. And that was — at the end of the episode, the status quo must be maintained. So your heroes would start each episode, go off and have some crazy adventures, risk life and limb and make many narrow escapes, but at the end, there was always the scooby-doo laugh and things were back to the way they started. Kirk and his crew would kill some bad guys, and sure some people that you’d never seen before would show up solely for the purpose of getting killed later on, but at the end of every episode, McCoy would make some snide comment to Spock, Spock would reply with his usual aplomb, and they’d all have a good laugh. For over 30 years, this law ruled over tv series. The reasoning was certainly simple and sound. Writers didn’t want to expect people to have to keep up with an ongoing storyline. What if you missed an episode? Or what if you came in at mid season? The rule was you should know everything you need to know to enjoy the show from the 1 minute credit sequence at the beginning.
In 1993 J. Michael Straczynski created a series called Babylon 5. Babylon 5 was unique among television series at the time because he said, from the very beginning, this story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It’s a novel for television. He said I’m going to tell the story over 5 seasons, and each episode is a chapter in the story. I can’t imagine the kind of opposition Mr. Straczynski must have faced in pitching this idea. “Are you crazy?” Producers would have screamed. You can’t expect people to follow your show for five years! But people did. And not only did Babylon 5 go on to earn huge critical and popular success, it paved the road for television series that came along after it, to use the story-arc as a means of presenting their entertainment. Today, some of of the most popular series on tv use the story-arc format. Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes — all have achieved enormous success without returning to the status quo at the end of each episode. Sure, there are still the periodic shows that enjoy major success — shows like the CSI series and all the flavors of Law and Order rake in money season after season employing old tried and true formulas. But people like Abrams and Straczynski have shown that it’s okay to expect more out of people. That it’s okay to expect people to commit to your story, and to treat them intelligently, instead of dumbing down to the lowest common denomator.
Where is he going?
Right now I see MMO quest and story design a lot like those old tv serials. In every commercial MMO, time advancement is done in the weird “perpetual now”. Time in the story is progressed by your character progressing. So the story is particular to you, and as you move through the levels, and the zones, you learn more about the story and the world and things progress. But at any particular location, time stands perpetually still. If you go back to Elwynn forest, today, they are still facing the same kobold encroachment they faced five years ago. And if you step through the Dark Portal in Hellfire Peninsula, you will still find Horde and Alliance forces both locked in an epic never-ending struggle against the forces of the Legion — only now they do it alone, pitiously, without the aid of human questors, because everyone that plays the game stopped caring a long time ago. The point is, at any given time within the game of the MMO, the status quo is maintained. I can log out now, and come back a year later, and provided the servers are still running, I will find thing just as I left them. The only thing is, of course, I’ll probably start a new character anyway, because I won’t remember what I was doing, how my character plays, or even why she is where she is.
There are many extremely good reasons why our worlds have to be this way. When you launch the game, your expectation is for continuous play, forever, until you go out of business. In much the same way that tv series expected to continue, ad infinitum, until people stopped watching them. And along with that expectation is that new players will join your game along the way, and you want everyone to be able to share in the same experience, to have the same opportunities. So that I, joining the game five years after the launch, can get to experience the same game that you experienced on launch day.
Well we now know both of these things to be fallacies. No MMO lasts forever, though there are certainly some that have done amazingly well over the long hall with a reduced, but dedicated core of players. And people that join an MMO five years after its launch are going to experience a completely different game than those that joined it at launch, as they level through largely empty newbie zones, being run through instances by high level players, and figuring out the meta game in an econony now dictated by players with tons of money. I talked about this phenonemon in great detail in a previous post. So I’m beginning to think that all those reasons why we build MMO’s in the state of “perpetual now”, are, perhaps, not all that important.
The MMO that Ended
What if we built an MMO that had an ending? What if we said, from the very beginning, this game is going to tell a story over a three year period of time? The story will have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And at the end of the story, the game is done.
Now pick up your jaw, put down the pitchfork for a moment, and hear me out. The idea is as I describe it. Over time, the game world actually changes. Events happen. Cities are razed. Armies invade. And those things stay that way. They never go back to the way they were before. As time passes in real life, so do events in the MMO game world, and the story moves inexorably forward, never back. Now there are a million reasons why this would never work. And I can’t design the entire game in this blog. But I do want to address at least a few of the biggest objections, just to show that it’s a notion worth pursuing.
What do you mean I”m older?
The biggest objection would be, I think, “Where do I start if I join halfway through the story?” Cause that’s a tough one. And I would be remiss if I introduced only one radical idea in this post, because for this idea to work, I think you have to buy off on another radical idea, and that is this: Your character progresses as the game progresses, whether it exists or not, and whether you play it, or not. Whoah. Think about that. So say the game lasts 24 months. And that time is broken up into 12 phases of two months each. At each phase, there is a level range. Say for the first phase of two months, the level range is 1 to 10. If you play during that phase, your level your character from one to ten. But as the game progresses, every character in the game is progressed to the next level range. So after two months into game, all characters are moved to the next level range. Obviously characters that played during that time will have better equipment, more money, and more skills than those that just got auto-progressed.. but the idea is no character is left behind. The story progresses.. the game progresses, and so do your characters. And people that join the game in mid progress, well they start with characters that are midway through the level range.
When you say over, do you really mean over?
Well I do mean the story is over. I dont mean necessarily that you kiss off your players and tell them to go play something else. There are lots of things you can do to keep people playing. Turn the game into a open, sandboxy style thing where players just repeat mini-games over and over again, like instances and battlegrounds, impoving their gear and their skills, basically just killing time until the designers release the next epic saga. Which, by the way, is exactly what WoW is now, when you think about it. You could also start the story all over again, on new servers, and allow players to bequeath some portion of their worldly possession to their “heirs”, so they can play again, but with a slight advantage due to the fact that they played the first time — just like watching reruns. The point is there’s lots to do to keep your players entertained when you’ve reached the end of the story.
How do I Catch up?
Well the easy answer is you give players videos to watch and text to read at the MMO community site that basically does the job of “Previously on Angel..“ But you realize that probably less than 1/10 of 1% of the players will actually go out there and read or watch these things, so you might just take the gutsier approach and say you don’t. You jump in with both feet and you figure out pretty quickly who’s who and you just trust that people are smart enough to figure it out, and go forward and have a great time. Just like you would if you started watching BSG at the beginning of season 2.
You’re crazy
So there you have it. The case for a finite MMO, and characters that progress as the story does — as the game does. There are lots more reasons why this might not work, but I want to end on thinking about what you could gain if this did work. Think about it — real stories with deep characters and engaging plots because you have months, perhaps years even, to tell your story. Real quests that aren’t limited to shallow, easily repeatable tasks because everyone has to have the same experience. And from the player’s standpoint – a genuine feeling of things are really going on! Shit is going to change, stuff is going to happen, and I want to be here to be a a part of it! Oh and if you convince your friend to join you three months after you’ve been playing? Guess what? His character is already very close to the same level you are! None of this trying to decide whether to power level him up to play with you, or for you to have to make an alt to play with him while you abandon your beloved main. And what’s more, he’s thrown into the story right with you, and you’re both working on the same things immediately!
It could be argued, to create your own ending to your MMO sounds very self-defeating. But I would say, by knowing the end, think about how much better you could make the ride..
Comments are rawk! Awesome! And other passe adjectives! Sound off — however you feel. I only ask that you be civil. And if you like what you read here, or you think it’s worth passing around, feel free to help a brutha’s exposure out and digg it. 
Tags: Design, Endgame, mmo
July 28th, 2009 on 11:55 am
Yeah, it’s unfortunate that Lord of the Rings Online is quite clearly aiming to fulfil the full arc of the books (And more) and yet, the farms that were being built when the game was in beta are still being built today. Creates an odd sort of disconnect.
I’ve mulled over some relatively simple ways to adjust the game world as a player progresses. A building under construction that the player can’t move around in the internal space of and as time goes on and quests relating to that building get completed the place is fully constructed and you can go inside to get further quests in this fledgling town.
The position where the previous quest giver was stood? Well that is now occupied by a generic NPC so that players can’t walk through the space but at the same time the NPC has quite clearly gone elsewhere to sort something else out. I’m sure there are plenty of other tricks possible if people were to sit down and really flesh out a way of expanding the concept.
You could go so far as to have a whole place gets invaded, burned to the ground and rebuilt but seen at different points of progression depending on the player.
July 28th, 2009 on 11:57 am
Interesting – Novel.
Hard to find funding when the barriers to entry are so high now and WOW doing so well. Its a unfriendly VC business plan but also has the novel factor.
I would also look at the rise of TV VS Film and maybe rather than have an ending or final look back to your original idea and have a new episode every month, bring the MMO ideal into a smaller format and ideal for the person with shrinking time available.
Character classes and upgrades travel with you but the enviro can change monthly – new worlds – new story – new characters – Its a heavier business model with constant high overheads of writers / world builders but you can go and steal the success of TV and replicate its asset in the MMO structure. Think “Quantum Leap” MMO !
Cheers
Alex
July 28th, 2009 on 12:40 pm
Essentially what you’re saying is that the WORLD plays YOU. I don’t think this is really so far-fetched, as it’s exactly what the real world does: you can’t stop what’s happeneing, but you can participate, assuming you’re in the right place at the right time.
I remember back in the early days of MxO, when people complained that the live events were happening off-hours, or something like that. When the world moves on whether you’re there or not, you’re going to get a LOT of pissed off people who feel that, for their monthly fee, they are entitled to experience everything when THEY are good and ready. On one hand, I kind of agree, but on the other hand, your idea is the perfect 180 degree turn from what we have now (and what everyone claims to be tired of).
July 28th, 2009 on 12:46 pm
I think this is a good idea and at the opposite end of the spectrum from the pure sandbox game that’s perpetually changing and lasts until the last players log off.
I think this would be perfect for something like Bioware’s Star Wars Old Republic MMO, in fact.
I wouldn’t be too surprised to see something like this in the next couple generations of MMOs. You would probably have more insight into this than I do but it seems that until MMOs get cheaper to make, we will only see a fraction of the concepts that are possible within the framework of an MMOG. When costs are high and development time is long, risks are not taken. Niche is a bad word.
However, if Hero Engine and other MMOG engines can make developing an MMO as easy as developing an FPS is today, then we’ll start to see some new concepts as a small team can spend a year and make a 1000-player supported game. We’ll see some interesting sandbox make-your-own-life games; games without classes, levels; episodic games; finite-life games; etc. We’re starting to see some of that now with games like Cities XL and the like but most of them are very small and rough (see: Mortal Online, etc).
It makes me want to hit the fast-forward button and also makes me wonder why there doesn’t seem to be more work done at the “DirectX”/”OpenGL” or “UnrealEngine” middleware level for MMOs. Until then, when developers have to worry about networking, database management, massive concurrency, server implementations, etc, we’ll see mostly “seen it before” designs.
July 28th, 2009 on 12:48 pm
PS. I think it’s good to give Joss Whedon some props for Buffy the Vampire Slayer which, even though it aired a few years after Babylon 5, was more widely viewed and really began the movement of TV shows into story arcs. That, and why the heck isn’t there a BtVS MMO? (ok see my previous post for that answer).
July 28th, 2009 on 4:23 pm
There’s a hole in your mind….
It’s an interesting idea. If you had the customer base for it, you could roll out new servers every few months, too. Start the 24 month arc over on a new server, let folks migrate their existing characters to a fresh-start character, losing levels (if the game had levels) but leaving them with some perk. As old, ‘finished’ servers lose population, you’d merge them together, freeing up servers to start fresh. As you added new chapters to the story, the cycle would get longer and longer.
But on the other hand, the closest thing to this I’ve played through is Asheron’s Call, and when some new ‘chapter’ was happening, everyone would swarm to the focal point of it and whatever player involvement the event contained would be completed in an hour or two. If you weren’t online then, you were out of luck. Generally they did updates during the day and by the time I’d get home from work, the ‘event’ was finished.
So yeah, the world changed, but I didn’t feel connected to it.
I think the real challenge is changing the world in such a way that 1000’s of players can feel like they had something to do with it.
I dunno how I feel about being bumped up levels every 2 months, either. But then, I like leveling, so maybe I’m not the right audience.
Interesting thoughts, though. Oh, another game kindof similar would be A Tale in the Desert. It has a finite lifespan, right?
July 28th, 2009 on 9:03 pm
I posted a similar concept a few years ago on my blog: Generations of characters. The short version is that you have the story arc, but you have it for one expansion. When a new expansion rolls around, you jump the timeline forward a bit. This means some old content is removed, while new content is added. You can advance storylines without disrupting existing players. You make it known when the expansion goes live and people can play around that.
One cool effect is you can do crazy huge events that don’t have to revert to the status quo afterwards. You could even introduce permadeath in the last month or so if players decide to go off and try to defeat the “big bad” of the game. Lots of options there.
The disadvantage, as pointed out, is that people may not want to play a game they come to late. People may be put off trying to join a game “too close” to the reset. That could be problematic from a business point of view.
Some food for thought.
July 28th, 2009 on 9:04 pm
I seemed to have flubbed the link to my blog entry in my previous post. Here it is: http://www.psychochild.org/?p=198
July 29th, 2009 on 3:08 am
This concept intrigues me, a lot.
As people have already said to keep the ball rolling you could have servers rolling out restarting the arch every few months, then those who missed that part of the story could jump back if they so desire
also the rolling on to the next phase i would go even further than just an automated tickover from stage to stage.
Your concept is to make it more real world then you should also consider that the stage progression is lead by the playerbase as a whole (obviously with autoprogression as a backup)
that could be as simple as a war effort that all the players have to chip into (only in your game you would actually see the war force being built) to interesting alternatives such as basing it on the games economy
use the analogy of the game revolving around a city, as players grow in level come back to the city to repair, buy, sell auction – all the money taken out of the game in those standard practices rather than just vanishing could fill a hidden progress bar for the city and the stage of the game
there really is quite a lot you could do with this
July 30th, 2009 on 5:58 am
This was a very interesting read.
Interestingly, many MMO players think about ways to “reboot” the game and/or the player character. Neverending progression is really a problem, you grow stronger and stronger, and soon 99% of the world except the near-max level areas are useless for you.
1.) Have natural disasters, weather and player actions change the world and environment. Have seasons and day/night cycles that influence the world. E.g. some quests require night time activities, and certain mobs like ghosts only show up during the night. I would like Tsunamis and other catastrophes.
2.) Let player chars age and die. They die when a story arc period is over. Items should get used up and damaged, this prevents uberitem inflation and makes crafting actually useful. Think of Ultima Online, almost all gear people used was player crafted. You could even read who crafted the weapon or armor.
The future chars for the next chapter/expansion!
2.1) Let players have children with other players or NPCs!
3.) Let players duke it out with the “evil opposing NPC faction” in the final phase of char advancement (levels 50-60, for example). Depending on the results, the world will change. Mordor from now on spawns an area the size of Russia e.g. xD
4.) This could be simple transfer of cities to other factions, some more serious changes like burnt forests, new small encampments, new quests and new storyline.
The game would REBOOT at this point and jump in time ahead, NEXT chapter and payment period. Players can chose to pay and play for one month or the full 3-6 month period planned for the chapter/book/story arc.
7.) Players start again at level 1. Possibly take over a few heirloom items and maybe have some kind of “Hall of Monuments” like in Guild Wars to display account and char achievements. Though I would not like to go as far as LOTRO and WoW with achievements and titles for every crazy little shit.
I think world reboot and player death/char reboot are important to get out of the vicious cycle of permanent progression. It would also retain the strengths of the “levelling up” model, where levelling and growing stronger is part of the fun. Endgame raiding is diminished return in contrast, lots of effort for little progression. These encounters should be epic, not a therapy for bored gamers crying for an endgame.
The “reboot the game” idea also has the potential to create compelling stories and worlds with a real history that is made by the players. SWTOR goes a rather cinematic and predetermined linear route at the moment, which gives the players less impact on the world as a whole.
August 1st, 2009 on 3:01 am
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August 3rd, 2009 on 5:32 pm
I’ve written about this sort of thing before as well. (Though after Psychochild’s articles, and without reading his. I’ve since rectified that oversight.) I love the idea of making a game world progress and have a real sense of time and narrative. Giving players power to take part and direct the flow is great too.
The Legend of the Five Rings CCG did some of that years ago by letting player tournament results direct the storyline for future expansions. It was a great way to build brand loyalty and give players reason to play.
That said… when I want a game with a strong story and a real ending, I’ll play an offline game (with optional multiplayer, if the mood strikes, say, Secret of Mana). There is no way that I can be convinced to pay a box price and recurring sub fees for a game that I won’t be able to wring every last drop of content out of. I can’t even be convinced to pay that for WoW, where I could theoretically explore everything.
August 5th, 2009 on 2:05 pm
I think you’re right that this is risky but I also think you’re right to push this envelope.
UO had seasons, most mmos have expansions, and WoW lately is actually reworking a small amount of content overtime to help tell the ongoing story.
*WOW SPOILER AHEAD*
In fact, the current plot in WoW foretells of the destruction of Azeroth with Loken’s demise. Loken warns the players that this is the beginning of the end and a ‘failsafe’ computer system comes on saying that it will destroy the world and rebuild it from its constituent parts.
*SPOILER END* =)
So one of the things I’m getting tired of is the fact that we keep getting higher level caps and the bar just keeps getting raised. So far its entertaining for me in WoW, but will it be in 3 more years? I grew weary of upping limits and gear in DAoC after the first 2 years.
So can you ‘end’ an MMO cleanly, intentionally without it ‘dying’ on its own and then transition cleanly to a new fresh story? Giving the opportunity to upgrade the technology while at the same time presenting fresh content for players?
It seems like you’d need to have ‘transitional’ features and some solid marketing into what you expect your players to jump to when you sink the ship.
Also, as some have mentioned, if players have a huge impact in the storyline, it might prove challenging to manage/tweak as a storyteller/designer for a system running multiple world servers. Most likely there would be all kinds of variants of outcomes on different servers which could make it hard to make future content additions which were appropriate to those servers.
Sounds fun and intriguing!
August 5th, 2009 on 2:25 pm
Ok hate to double-post. But just thought I’d throw this out there.
One of the common things I hear about mmos is that a building remains in a certain state over the lifetime of the game.
There’s examples all over MMOs of bridges which have been under construction for 4 years or houses that have been burning for 2 years and so on and so forth.
What if some constructions could be flagged as ‘morphing’ or something indicating that they are intended to have a lifecycle? What I mean to say, instead of static houses. Some houses we know are going to catch fire and burn to the ground, or we want players to see them constructed over the months/years. SO when this content is created, does it make sense to go ahead and build in various ’states’ which allow the designers to advance their look and functionality over time?
Its usually cheaper to build it in upfront than change it later right?
August 5th, 2009 on 4:06 pm
Brian, there are rumors about websites and trademarks that have been registered hinting at something called “WoW: Cataclysm”.
This pretty much sounds like the Prophecy of Loken that you mentioned. WoW restart with a new world and new engine?
August 15th, 2009 on 6:27 pm
Great post! A couple of nits:
As Pete S mentioned, A Tale in the Desert has “a global foregame, midgame, and endgame”, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_in_the_Desert
The formula you describe applies to TV sitcoms, but soap operas and their ilk date to much earlier than 1993 and don’t maintain the status quo, although the story progression can be glacial to allow one to miss an episode or two. Though I gather most are ongoing in the sense that they don’t have a beginning or ending.
August 22nd, 2009 on 2:24 am
It seems Blizzard does some kind of soft reboot to their world, leaving old chars intact but changing the entire world.
Can one imagine a more exciting and dramatic server event? Cataclysm makes the opening of the Black Gate and Ahn’Qiraj look rather minor in comparison.
I would not mind if Thunderstorms/Blizzards could kill players in flight. Basically, time to buckle up and ride. Or they should place German 8.8 guns manned by undead Nazis on Mountain Ridges and let some flying monsters mob up the skies! :>
December 28th, 2009 on 1:23 am
Действительно интересно. Значит надо какие-то поправки вносить.