Sometimes Old IS Good
As I spoke about in my Lack of Inspiration article, I have been less than inspired by the current market of gaming; specifically the MMO gaming market. And it appears that I am far from alone in this. Prof. Venatus recently linked an article to me that I think addresses this exact topic.
The article is over on Wolfshead Online and is titled The Emasculation of MMOs: Part 1 – How Convenience Replaced Risk. Perhaps it was due to my current state of mind, but the article just pulled me in. The Wolfshead starts his article with the following analogy:
Twelve starving men sat down at a table. Before them was placed a sumptuous banquet. Then one of the men protested: “I don’t like salt…”. So in order not to offend him the others agreed to remove the salt from the table. Then another man exclaimed: “I detest pepper…”. So in order not to anger him they all consented to remove the pepper from the table. Each remaining man rose in turn rose and protested yet another ingredient until there was nothing left on the table. With nothing left to eat the twelve men died of hunger.
Essentially the article goes on to argue that without a sense of risk the player of an MMO loses the feeling of accomplishment. Sort of like going out and winning the Tour de France without really having to ride the full 21 days, or winning the Super Bowl without having to play the regular season.
I found the article to be very thought provoking. The reality for me are that MMO’s tend to go bad when the creators/dev’s listen to the masses. Some of my fondest memories go back to Asherons’ Call. A game that would most likely “fail” into today’s market, yet it contained a lot of great features. Spellcrafting, spell components, currency weight, unfortunately corpse runs, and of course death penalties…although I don’t think it would delevel you.
It was my first MMO, and like my first girlfriend, I have fond memories of it…often forgetting all the angry moments as time passes.
I agree that in today’s world of gaming, death penalties are somewhat of a joke. Just today I was leveling in Age of Conan and fighting a group of cannibals and such when I got overran. Fortunately there was a rez stone very very close to the fight area, so I simply released ran back and essentially continued the fight with my buddies. This is just one example of the lack of risk involved…when you can simply just run back to continue the fight with only a minor delay (the release, run back, rebuff, etc). Overall, not very challenging.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate(d) corpse runs, but it did make me very aware of a few things.
- Health
- Roaming mobs (PAT’s)
- Other players/gankers
- Respawns
And while I am still often aware of those things, I, like most players, are not “worried” about it. It’s not like I’m going to drop my new sword and lose it…
On the other hand, we need to understand that many of the new gamers that are coming up are being raised in the “We don’t keep score & everyone get’s a trophy” age. So often challenges are not what these younger players really want…they simply want the rewards and are will to pay for them (aka Blizzard approach).
Until next time, enjoy the 4th.
Oh, another great series on this topic is the three part piece by Keen over on KeenAndGraev.com. Have a read of the series: Old MMO Mechanics I Love and You Probably Hate (Part 1) : Part 2 : Part 3
Tagged with: asherons call • EQ • gaming • mmo
Filed under: Gaming
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
It is great to have the opportunity to read a good quality article with useful information on topics that a lot are interested on. The point that the data pointed are all first hand on real experiences even helps more. Keep doing what you do as we enjoy visiting your blog.