MMO Gaming

Tobold, from over at “Tobold’s MMORPG Blog” was kind enough to take some time and answer a few questions I sent him. If you haven’t already checked out his site, take the time to do so, there are always great articles to read. Without wasting too much time describing everything, here is the interview (questions appear in bold, answers are italicized):

1. What game(s) (MMO obviously) are you currently playing?
World of Warcraft. I’m in a beta too, but my lawyer tells me I can’t even say which one.

2. What was the first MMO you played? What drew you to it?
Ultima Online. I played it because I liked the Ultima single-player games, and found the idea to play together with other people fascinating.

3. How do you feel about MMOs as they relate to single-player or small group type games? And what do you say to someone who has never played an MMO before to get them to try?
Interaction with other real people adds a whole new dimension to a game. People who never played an MMO I ask whether they are using some sort of internet chat software. If they do, it is easy to see why the combination of a game with chat is so compelling.

4. Looking back at the launch time or around that time of various MMOs, what do you see as a recurring problem companies seem to have?
Many games are not very stable at launch time, apparently the companies underestimate the load that thousands of players trying to log on have on their servers.

5. Along with question 4, what mistakes throughout a games lifetime do you see repeated?
From a gameplay point of view the main mistake of MMOs is that they are built around near-endless repetition of a “basic repetitive unit”, like combat, and that this “basic repetitive unit” isn’t entertaining enough to be still interesting after hundreds and thousands of repeats. Especially since the artificial intelligence of the mobs is often lacking.

6. And now following up question 5, if you were creating your own MMO what would it be like? In what ways would you innovate to set your game apart from others on the market?
I described that game once at http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2004/06/shandalar.html
The basic idea behind this is to add a random element into combat, so that it remains interesting for a longer time. Instead of always having the same abilities to chose from, you draw a selection of abilities from a shuffled deck, which you built yourself from ability cards you acquire over the course of the game. Magic the Gathering meets MMO. In single-player games Metal Gear Acid on the PSP comes close to that idea.

7. A lot of MMOs seem to suffer from a problem with balance of content because of the diverse nature of the people playing them (i.e. raiders, PvPers, “casual” players, etc.). In response to issues of balance some companies take content and “dumb it down” or make it easier to complete, how do you feel about this? What is (are) the alternative(s)?
I don’t think the word “easier” describes it well. These companies don’t “dumb” anything down, they are just shortening the game. And as long as this shortening cuts down on boring grind and downtime, that is a good thing. The fundamental problem is that in a MMO your power always depends on how many hours you played that character, and not how skilled you are. The alternative is to present players that reach the level cap with a cutscene congratulating them on their victory, and then a “game over” screen. “Winning” the game like that could unlock new races or classes, like in a console game.

8. As a World of Warcraft player and as a fan of the MMO genre in general do you think Blizzard’s success is good for MMOs or not?
Blizzard’s success is mainly good for MMOs, because it proved that with a MMO you can earn millions of dollars. That causes a lot more money to be invested in other games than they would otherwise have received. WoW’s success will result in more MMOs, and better MMOs, and that is good. The only caveat is that there is a danger of post-WoW games not understanding what made World of Warcraft so successful, and just producing bad copies.

9. What upcoming games are you most excited about? What about least excited?
I’m most excited about Lord of the Rings Online. I’m least excited about Tabula Rasa, because neither first-person shooters nor the Sci-Fi genre interest me very much.

10. What is your fondest memory from time spent playing MMOs?
My fondest memory is of my guild in Everquest. It wasn’t a raiding guild, we were all low- to mid-level. But we were very close to each other, friends as much as you can be with people you never met in real life. Playing together and helping each other was the top priority for us, things like advancing in levels and getting phat loot were of secondary importance. I am missing that in most of the World of Warcraft guilds I have seen, there is usually a strong “we guild so we can raid” underlying theme, a marriage of convenience, not love.

Final Comments:
I believe 2007 will be a quite interesting year for MMO players. With the market having grown so much due to World of Warcraft, there is now the possibility of it dividing in different genres and niches. There will be action-MMOs, MMOs in non-fantasy worlds, classic hardcore grind MMOs, and MMOs based on existing strong brands and licenses. This isn’t a question of some “WoW killer” turning up, but more one of a stream of players for who WoW was the first MMO now slowly getting tired of it and looking for alternatives.

Once again, thank you to Tobold for taking the time out of his schedule to answer my questions.

Tobold, Tobold’s MMORPG Blog, MMO games, interviews