Methodology of Arc World Design
As I mentioned before I think it is important to take a few minutes and go over the methodology of the Arc world design I mentioned a few day ago. Somewhere along the way I think I wasn’t perfectly clear in relating that this idea is fundamental to the world design of the game, not necessarily in game feature/system design. However, as I also noted, features should be derived from your world design, they are interwoven and ignoring that would cause a lot of inconsistencies.
MMOG design can be different than the typical design of single-player games. In a single-player game you can have a story you want to tell and work in your gameplay to that (making it an integral part of the story of course.) In an MMOG though, that thinking must be reversed. First you must have gameplay figured out so that you can build your story around that. It seems a small thing but can’t be overlooked. If you want to tell a story and design your game around that than you already have problems.
Arc world design is basically a tree diagram. At the top you have the arcs (this is your world.) Below these are the paths (the various game systems) and below that is where the story comes in. Your story is no less important than your world, of course. This is not a list to show the most important elements to the least, what it does is show the best way to get the desired result for an MMOG, that is the player feels immersed in it. It is much easier to immerse yourself in the story if everything you are doing with the story is supported by in-game systems. Those systems are then supported by your world design.
We’ll pick back up on this later, but I think that covers the main points I wanted to bring out for now.
mmo gaming, mmog, mmo, mmorpg, game design, game theory, arc world design, world design
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