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The Game Archaeologist and the SysOp's Sinister Stratagem
When you think of MMORPGs, I wouldn't blame you if your mind stayed rooted firmly in the past decade or so, perhaps taking a brief vacation to 1997 before returning to today's 3-D polygonal glory. But it's not like people just woke up in the late 90's, looked at each other, and said, "Hmm. Online multiplayer RPGs. Let's make it happen!" On the contrary, history had been building up to that moment for quite some time. Tabletop RPGs and computer MUDs (multi-user dungeons) were both important ancestors of modern MMOs, just as was a mostly forgotten piece of software lore: the bulletin board system, also known as the BBS. In layman's terms, BBSes were like pocket internets -- host computers that allowed anyone to dial up and use special programs remotely. While BBSes weren't (initially) tied together like the world wide web, they featured a lot of the elements that would make the WWW so popular, such as email, forums, and, yes, online games. Today's special one-shot Game Archaeologist will take a brief look at the history of the BBS, as well as a couple of its games that could be considered "MORPGs" (like the renowned website, the "Massively" part would be a while in coming). Dial up, gentle readers, and make your hissing modem noises!
Game Developers Choice Online Awards to knight Richard Bartle as a "Game Legend"
If it's cool to be officially dubbed an "Online Game Legend," then it's doubly cool to be the first person to ever receive such an award. Richard Bartle will be rocking cool two ways from Sunday this fall, as the Game Developers Choice Online Awards plans to honor the good doctor this October. The Online Game Legend Award stemmed from a pool of open nominations and was chosen by the GDC Online Awards advisory committee. They specify Bartle's co-creation of MUDs and his 2003 book Designing Virtual Worlds as the key reasons why he deserves to be named a capital-L Legend. Bartle isn't the only one due for a special award, however. Ultima Online will be inducted into their Hall of Fame as "a specific online game that has resulted in the long-term advancement of the medium, pioneering major shifts in online game development and games as a whole." The full awards ceremony will take place on October 7th, and will include a number of other categories including Best Online Game Design and Best New Online Game. You can eyeball the full details over at GDC Online Awards' website.
The Daily Grind: Do you feel like you missed out on the golden days of MMOs?
Depending on who you talk to and their personal perspective, I could be considered either a MMO newbie or a seasoned veteran. While I tinkered around with Anarchy Online a bit back in 2003, I never started seriously playing MMORPGs until City of Heroes and World of Warcraft in 2004 (and haven't stopped since!). While six-plus years of gaming isn't inconsequential, there are plenty out there who cut their teeth on older titles: the EverQuests, the Dark Age of Camelots, the Ultima Onlines, and even the MUDders. To them, I'm a greenhorn and forever will be. For those of you who haven't been there since the beginning, do you feel like you missed out on the golden era of MMOs? Do you regret not hopping on board earlier, either to experience these titles in their wild youth or to gain gamer cred by being able to say "I was there back when"? While I have no delusions that those earlier days and older MMOs were as user-friendly (or even as fun) as games are today, I do wish I had hopped on board right at the beginning. Heck, if I had known about MUDs in college, you bet I would've been in one instead of spending time with girls and textbooks (oh, wait...). I would've liked to have seen those communities in action, and would've loved to seen the genre grow from the very start instead of the middle. How about you?
Redefining MMOs: More than lore
There's a self-created paradox in the MMO industry. This genre asks its participants to invest copious amounts of time and people do want to spend a hours and hours within a single, expansive virtual environment. The downside is that videogames tend to spin on a single mechanical axis: conflict.In the MMO realm, conflict generally means combat. The problem is endless conflict becomes excruciatingly tedious. Crafting, socialization and sometimes even mini-games have been employed to counteract this, yet it remains a substantial issue. Whereas the story and plot development -- our topics this week -- have largely taken a back seat.With professional MMO development soaring and a whole new generation of promising titles on the way, we stand on the cusp of what could be the next big evolutionary leap for online gaming. In the coming weeks and months, Massively will be examining how the MMO genre has been redefined during the current generation of games and where it's headed in the next. If you have something important to say on the topic, feel free to post a comment on page two or even write your own "Redefining MMOs" blog post and leave a comment with the URL -- we'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic.
Massively speaks with Sparkplay Media's CEO on Earth Eternal
With Sparkplay Media's first game, Earth Eternal, going into beta, we got the chance to sit down with the CEO of the company, Matt Mihaly, and pick his mind on a variety of things related to setting up shop in the free to play genre.Matt's no stranger to the massively multiplayer space, holding a strong background as the CEO and founder of Iron Realms Entertainment, a company dedicated to creating multi-user dungeons (MUDs) including Imperian, Aetola, Achaea, and Lusternia. If that wasn't enough, Achaea was one of the first games to introduce the sales of virtual goods, making him one of the pioneers of the base that free-to-play games now stand on.So what's his thought process behind Earth Eternal? What are some of the things we can expect from the MMO that's sporting over 22 races? Hit the continue reading link, and find out!
Massively speaks with Sparkplay Media's CEO on Earth Eternal pt. 2
How have the launches of FusionFall and Free Realms affected Earth Eternal? Have you changed your development or goals in any way because of the success of those two games, or have you stayed the course and continued to build things your way, disregarding those two games?Not really, no. Games like Runescape and Habbo have had more influence on our plans than either of those two games, simply because they're so much bigger. FusionFall and Free Realms have gotten a lot of press in the last year, but neither of them have achieved the level of success that games like Runescape and Habbo have. Actually, nobody really knows how Free Realms is doing outside of SOE. Three million registrations doesn't tell you much about how many active players they have as you don't know how quickly players are churning out of the experience. With the massive dollars they spent on marketing too, it'd be surprising if they couldn't get a few million registrations. The challenge for them (and everyone else in this space, including us) is to convert that fleeting attention into long-term, loyal players. "We're more in the vein of a classic fantasy MMO than a collection of minigames." How will Earth Eternal separate itself from the growing free-to-play genre in America? What will make this game stand out?We're a different kind of experience from FusionFall or Free Realms. We're more in the vein of a classic fantasy MMO than a collection of minigames. I think where we stand out is by offering the best browser-based fantasy MMO out there. We've made the decision to have no humans, elves, or dwarves (or gnomes, hobbits, or anything else too close to human), preferring instead to offer everything from humanoid lizards and falcons to the Clockwork and Yeti. We're definitely fantasy but we want to stay away from the pack, almost all of whom have the humans/elves/dwarves thing going on. We've also got an enormous number of races for players (unlike the two games you mentioned) – 22 at launch.Considering all of Earth Eternal's development, what part of the game are you the most proud of? What is that one feature you can't wait to show off?The number one thing I'm proud of is how much our team has managed to do on relatively little funding for an open world 3D MMO (about five million dollars.) As far as game features go the biggest feature I'm looking forward to showing off is our Groves system, which will be introduced at final launch, a few months after we go into open beta. Thanks so much for your time, Matt!
Behind the Curtain: Too much information
So, just the other day I hit level 30 on my latest World of Warcraft alt – a Dwarf Priest. I hopped on the nearest Gryphon to Ironforge to train up some skills, and noticed that I had unread mail. Skipping gaily towards the nearest mailbox, I was most surprised to find a letter from Ultham Ironhorn, the Dwarven Riding Trainer, letting me know that I was now eligible to purchase a mount from his fine establishment. For those of you unfamiliar, originally in WoW, you had to wait until you'd hit level 40 before you could buy a mount. Patch 2.4.3 changed that, and lowered the level requirement for a standard mount to level 30. I hadn't read anywhere though, that, upon reaching level 30, your character would be told about it. Back in-game, I checked with my guildies to see if they knew anything about the mail. They didn't, none of them having levelled up an alt in some time, so it was news to all of us. We all agreed that Blizzard must have implemented it to point players in the direction of a mount, when they might otherwise have missed out on the early availability. It got me thinking about information and the availability of it in game.
Koster: MMOs removed more features from MUDs than they added
Areae president, MetaPlace developer, and all-around-MMO-authority Raph Koster wrote up a blog post about the influence of MUDs on today's graphical MMOs. The post is part of the broader, cross-blog discussion that began with our interview with Richard Bartle last week. You can read Koster's post in that context if you really want to, but it's interesting on its own.He started out by saying which MUDs influenced the developers of which early MMOs. For example, LP MUDs had an impact on Ultima Online. Then he named a handful of the best innovations of the modern MMO -- "advanced raiding," instances, improvements to combat via spaciality, etc. After saying all those positive things though, he dropped a bit of a bomb, saying that despite all that, "MMOs have removed more features from MUD gameplay than they have added, when you look at the games in aggregate."Oh noes! Are the Warhammer Online fans fuming yet? Well, they shouldn't be. "Failure to evolve more radically isn't a flaw," said Koster. He finished up by positing that all the current MMOs "are already Old Guard," and that "the mudder crew is already the Older Guard. So in a sense this is kind of like an argument between art rockers and disco musicians."
Player vs. Everything: The MMO clone wars
You can say a lot of things about a game you don't like. You can say that it sucks or that it's poorly balanced. You can say that the art direction is all wrong, or you can say that it's lacking in any number of features a good game should have. But sometimes a game takes flak for committing the most grievous sin of all: copying another game. One of the most commonly cited complaints about any given game is that they copied "feature X" from "game Y." For some reason, MMOG players in particular just love to cite the classic "It's just a clone of (whatever)" when they're trying to challenge the very essence of a particular title. If a game is a copy (the reasoning goes) then clearly the designers are wholly uninspired, worthless, and incapable of creating anything interesting or original. It really seems to irk players who feel that their game is being somehow wronged when another game uses similar ideas. But is this really such a bad thing? Might cloning features, or even cloning games, actually be the best possible thing for the games industry?
Player vs. Everything: What if WoW sold its code base?
I could bore you all today by starting my article with a lengthy story about the pre-history of your beloved MMORPGs, but I'll cut to the important part: Once upon a time there was a little game called DikuMUD. Similar in nature to the popular Dungeons and Dragons tabletop roleplaying game, it quickly took off with the geek crowd and became something of a phenomenon. In 1991, the source code for the game was made public and it grew into the most popular code base out there for the creation of multi-user dungeons, largely attributed to the ease with which the code could be set up and run. This led to an explosion of rather similar games that eventually gave rise to the more modern virtual fantasy worlds like Ultima Online, EverQuest, and World of Warcraft (each of these have been compared to DikuMUDs at various times). What's the point of rehashing all of this? Simply this: While many people would probably disagree with me, the proliferation of a popular, established code base that was proven to attract players and was easy to set up "out of the box" allowed enormous innovation and creativity to flourish. At one point, there were so many MUDs available on the web that you could go to a website designed specifically to sort out what features you wanted in yours (and play it free of charge, most of the time). Given the wild popularity of World of Warcraft today, I can't help but wonder what would happen to the online gaming industry if Blizzard decided to start selling their source code to people interested in starting up their own game.
Crackwhip, your source for MUD-style D&D gameplay
One of the greatest things about the Web is that there's no such thing as obsolescence. Anything you have ever loved is out there, somewhere, waiting for you to find it and love it again. Such is the case with old-school MUDs, where virtually everything, from gameplay to character creation, is text-based. Well, the creators of Crackwhip have been missing those days, so they've brought the glory back with their browser-based text adventure. Alongside the text you'll find simple graphics that represent objects, areas, and characters from the game. Additionally, these guys understand addiction -- from the press release: 'Want to play CrackWhip at work? No problem; at the top there are check boxes, uncheck these to turn graphics off, this way your computer screen will not reveal graphics as you quest for glory and coinage at your place of work.' Ironically, of course, those of us with jobs that are somewhat graphics-rich will be firing off a huge flare when our supervisors see a text-only screen.Regardless, if you've been pining for the days of yore and want to return to a time when imagination was the killer app, check out Crackwhip.
A brief history of botting
Botting -- the act of using a program (a 'bot') to kill mobs, perform quests, harvest nodes and so on -- usually is explicitly banned by a game's EULA, and at least ethically gray even where it wasn't directly ruled out. Right or wrong, botting has been with us since the very dawn of massively multiplayer games, in MUDs -- text-based Multi-User Dungeons. Raph Koster -- Ultima Online developer, Star Wars Galaxies architect and CEO of game-development-for-the-masses Areae -- brings us back to the days of yore when MUDs first met botters -- and how they dealt with it. It's a stirring tale of autohunters, deathtrap rooms, trigger phrases, healbots and the devs who loved them.
Dewmocracy: from Mountain Dew marketing to MMO?
When it comes to MMOs, we here at Massively see it as our charge to explore every type of game out there, whether it be multi-million dollar blockbuster title in the making like Warhammer Online or a simplistic browser-based game like Dofus. We don't discriminate. Except, as in the course of my warm-up lap around the internet this morning, when I see the term MMO co-opted as a corporate buzzword for "anything online that appeals to the 18-35 male demographic." When I found a story claiming that Mountain Dew's new "Dewmocracy" campaign was part MMO, and a successful one at that, I was skeptical, as you can well imagine. Part of the spirit of the campaign is a story (penned by Oscar winner Forrest Whitaker no less) set in a sort of dystopian future where a man's soda options are enforced at the business end of a policeman's baton. Players are tasked with coming up with the newest flavor of Mountain Dew, which will be put to a national taste test later this year, and presumably free mankind from the long arm of tyranny.Instead of factions in the tradition sense, you align yourself with whatever new flavor of Mountain Dew you like best. At this stage of the game, most of the preliminary flavor choices have already been made, so it's largely about branding. Using a flash-based interface that is strangely reminiscent of the MUDs of yore, you're tasked with making logos and other branding pieces to be voted on by other players of your faction. This is linked with a number of little mini-games that are derivative even by Webkinz standards. The only really "massive" aspect of the game is the fact that players get to vote on their favorite flavors and advertising materials.What's perhaps most startling is that, even though this Dewmocracy thing hardly qualifies as an MMO in even the loosest sense of the term, their VP of Marketing has expressed an interest, and here I assure you I am not joking, in "expanding it into a long-term MMO." Pirates of the Unquenchable Thirst? Tabula Cola? World of Dewcraft? The mind reels in horror.
Sci-fi MMO, you're my only hope...
The Ancient Gaming Noob wrote a fascinating article about why sci-fi MMOs haven't flourished. It's certainly not a new topic, but the Noob backs his argument up with credible facts and a strict analytical comparison (as opposed to the boisterous blatherings of the typical forum troll) that prove his point.In Is there hope for a science fiction MMORGP?, the Noob posits that fantasy MMORPGs came about (and became more popular) due to a series of environmental factors that were present for the fantasy genre, but not for sci-fi. He compares four major factors: literature, table top RPGs, computer RPGs, and MUDs (aka Multi-User Dungeons). The body of historical fantasy literature provides the major ground work for the other three categories. While "The Lord of the Rings" might pop into your head first, Tolkien's great novels were not the beginning of the fantasy genre. As illustrated by the Noob, much older works such as Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe," and Sir Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur" existed. But the trump card? The 11th century Beowulf is the oldest surviving epic poem written in the English language. It's a fantasy story. The entire fantasy genre has been ingrained into our collective human psyche for centuries.And what does science fiction have? Uh, not much. At least not compared to those legendary scripts. Granted there are some "old" science fiction tales, but the genre as we know it today didn't exist until the early part of the 20th century. I don't mean to knock the likes of Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, or Kevin J. Anderson, but in a historical context the space traveling genre is the new kid on the block. And as the Noob so eloquently points out, some of Asimov's own underlying scientific theories haven't held up so well over the years.Take a gander at Noob's article then come back here and let us know what you think. Are you a fantasy fanatic? Or do you yearn for a great sci-fi game that will even the decidedly lopsided MMO table back in the favor of ray guns and aliens?
Ancient Gaming Noob talks to WorldIV about how far we've come
One of the things I love about being a gamer (and especially an MMO gamer in particular) is that we're here to see history in the making right now. We were around when Ultima was being played, and when World of Warcraft was being formed and becoming known as the first mainstream MMO. The guys writing on blogs right now and the players playing in game at this very moment are literally the pioneers of the field. And so it's exciting to see what we gamers have to say-- that's why this interview with Ancient Gaming Noob is such a great read.Not only does he talk about some of the great MMOs he's played since 1985, but you can get a real sense of how far gamers and games have come. Just thirty years ago, they were the realm of arcade games and quarters, and now, AGN is finding time for them among his family, and picking LEGO Universe as a game he and his daughter can play together. He also has some great insights on blogging about MMO gaming, and it's completely true: "more than crickets" is all you can really hope for.Nice read. So exciting to think that for all the progress and evolution online games and gaming has made, we're still living in the first generation of gamers. Us kids playing MUDs and Asteroids are grown with families of our own now, and it's amazing to look back at all the different audiences playing games nowadays and realize that it's still only the beginning.
Dofus embraces permadeath with new hardcore servers
Richard Bartle once said, "Do you want permadeath or pedophilia? Both seem equally attractive to most players." In other words, permanent death in MMORPGs is pretty much unheard of, and most people who hear the idea are horrified that it should even be suggested. A few MUDs have it, but in the graphical world, there's almost no such thing. The original Lord of the Rings MMO that was developed by Sierra and eventually canceled was going to have it. That's the closest we've gotten to mainstream MMO permadeath.The developers of Dofus, then, are either completely insane or just very daring. They've announced plans to open up "hardcore" servers in December. On hardcore servers, player characters will receive significantly more experience and gain new items and abilities much faster than on normal servers. But when they die, that's it. They've passed on. They are no more. They have ceased to be. Bereft of life, they rest in peace. They've joined the bleeding choir invisible. They are, in their entireties, ex-Dofus toons.At various stages in an age-old debate, proponents have suggested that if executed in the right way in a certain kind of game, permadeath could enrich the online gaming experience. Battles would be more intense and PvP would be more meaningful, for example. Will you play on Dofus' hardcore servers, or is permadeath an affront to everything you believe in?
How the MMO crawled out of the MUD
Clockwork Gamer has a good juicy post up about how MMOs first learned how to do things from MUDs, and since today is Old School Day, I thought it was appropriate. Wait, you haven't heard of Multi-User Dungeons? If you've never played one, you'll probably be shocked that they used to fascinate people-- imagine an old-school computer, with its green text on a black screen, dialing into another computer and entering a text-based virtual world. As in, you dial up your favorite BBS, and a message greets you "You are in an inn. There are exits north and west," and from there, you type in words telling the computer what to do, while other users play the game with you. You can try the whole thing with the java client here if you want.A far cry from the virtual worlds we know today, yes, but that's where it started. CG actually focuses on the higher level of things (in many MUDs, players could actually form guilds, and wander around the world together-- "go north"-- killing dragons-- "attack dragon with great mace"), but even the most basic of MMO thrills was originated in the MUD world. "Seeing" a virtual character pass through the room you're in ("Kingofworld enters the room. Kingofworld leaves the room.") was a thrill, because you knew that there was someone else, looking at a screen just like you, behind that character. On the other hand, as CG points out, there were a lot of things that MUDs could do that graphical MMOs can't nowadays.
Podcast looks back at Meridian 59 history
Want to work on your old-school cred? Check out Virgin Worlds' "Online Gamer's Anthology" podcast episode #5 and learn a bit about the history of arguably the first graphical MMO ever, Meridian 59.The podcast starts out with a somewhat awkward skit which pays homage to Meridian 59's gameplay, but if you skip ahead about 30 minutes you'll get straight to the meat of it -- an in-depth, tell-all interview with developer Brian "Psychochild" Green, who has worked on the game since 1998. He talks about what makes the game unique and relevant, its demise at the hands of 3DO, and its resurrection by his own company, Near Death Studios. Here's a highlight from the interview -- Green explaining why re-launching Meridian 59 was important to him:If you don't have a good sense of history it's really hard to move forward. Looking at more modern games, you have the level and class based system of EverQuest or World of Warcraft. I think a lot of times people look at only the most recent things and think, "Oh, that's the way it's always been, and that's what we have to follow." I think having a wider range of history -- the Meridian 59s, the Ultima Onlines, even those older games back into the proprietary systems -- knowing more about those can kind of give you a wider perspective.
The Guardian Unlimited interviews Richard Bartle
If you aren't familiar with the name Richard Bartle, you should be. He was one of the creators of the first Multi-User Dungeons back in 1978 -- the text-based precursors to modern MMOs. (Before you ask, yes, MUDs still exist, for players with the patience to read.) And Bartle shares his unique perspective to the genre with us in this interview with the Guardian Unlimited:...[today's] virtual worlds are not as sophisticated. Yes, they have the 3D graphics, but what you can do in them as a player isn't as sophisticated as what you can do in a textual world. This means players don't have as many tools and abilities available to them within the world to enhance the experience of others.And of World of Warcraft, Bartle says:...I'd close it. I just want better virtual worlds. Sacrificing one of the best so its players have to seek out alternatives would be a sure-fire way to ensure that unknown gems got the chance they deserved, and that new games were developed to push back the boundaries.
