The Digital Continuum: Player abuse, redemption and revolution

Lets go back about ten years or so to the original EverQuest. Now it isn't my intention to pick on any one game, I just happen to be more familiar with it than Ultima Online or Meridian 59. For the sake of immersion let me assume the role of a 1999 copy of EverQuest that you happen to be playing on your gaming machine back in the last year of the last century.

You just died in EverQuest. How dare you die! Since you had the nerve to be defeated in combat, you'll now be required to run from your binding point — which could potentially be very far away — to your dead body, which contains all of your equipment and bags that just happen to hold all of your inventory. If you fail to do this, then you lose all of these items. Oh but you've already lost some experience and possibly de-leveled if you happened to have recently leveled up.

Hey! Why are you logging out? So what if you think you'd rather play Half-Life right now, this is the game you're paying for monthly. Don't you think you'd better get the most out of it? Hah! See? I knew you were only bluffing. All right, now get to running, noob.

This is just one example of game mechanics that generally punished players back in 1999 and while some people still have no problems with this type of game design — although you could argue that it's an incredibly niche crowd nowadays — World of Warcraft has proven that many prefer a less hostile massively multiplayer online game.

As time has gone on and the MMO market has grown, developers have come up with different ways to lower the level of punishment given out to players. Quest-givers have floating icons over their heads where before they had no such designation. The grinding malaise has been eased through the addition of more quests. Other in-game activities such as crafting and PvP have been improved upon through iterations and innovations. EA Mythic's Realm vs Realm being one example of PvP innovations while the streamlining of the crafting system in World of Warcraft the perfect example of improvement through iteration.

Another big change happened with the removal of experience loss on death. Many new games have done away with experience loss over the past four or five years. Fun shouldn't have to be found in running for a corpse or re-leveling your previously leveled character. It should be found in fighting epic battles or adventuring and crafting in interesting and new ways. Obviously developers have begun to feel similarly over the years or perhaps they're just realizing that players don't want to put up with it anymore.

Game features like drawn-out grinding or immense, repetitive raiding in World of Warcraft have been rightfully criticized, but Wrath of the Lich King has proven that Blizzard is already figuring out some solutions to these problems. Gone are the days of prolonged, huge raids being the main attraction in Azeroth. Now, everyone can expect to have some fun with both 10-man and 25-man versions available for every instance in the upcoming expansion pack. This means the hardcore can keep playing how they've been, but smaller groups of friends can also experience the fun of Azeroth's best instanced content. Blizzard has also promised to ease the pain sometimes associated with grinding, but hasn't detailed exactly how they plan to do that just yet.

Some would say that these improvements make MMOs too easy and thus less fun or entertaining. The argument goes that creating a game that everyone wants to and can play also makes said game dumbed-down. This isn't true and one key reason is Blizzard's own mantra of "simple-yet-deep" design. Well that and polish, but we all know about that one. In fact, I would argue that the opposite has occurred. Making MMOs easier and friendlier to play has increased the amount of fun and entertainment that can be pried from the deepest bowels of its content. This change in design direction has seen players being redeemed by the genre.

Example: In the time of EverQuest when in-game maps weren't exactly great, resourceful players would map out areas and instances around Norrath. These players were known among the community for all of their hard work and effort into making the game easier and more enjoyable for other players. That hasn't really changed with the newer MMOs though. Especially if you look at the mod scene in a game like World of Warcraft where there are tons of useful mods for specific classes, raiding, gathering resources and all sorts of other tasks. There's even a mod that will vend all of your grey (worthless) items with one click of a button.

My point is that making these games friendlier to players doesn't ruin what makes them so much fun: their communities. In fact, the communities in newer games seem to be thriving and it's not just World of Warcraft, either. Games like Lord of the Rings Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, City of Heroes and of course the current version of EverQuest all have very strong communities. Some may be larger — or much larger — than others, but they all share the same re-occurring theme: strong communities.

I honestly think it's pretty hard to say most MMOs punish players nowadays. Well, with the exception of certain players. Even more than that, many upcoming MMOs seem to be giving players a revolution of sorts. Warhammer Online has the super-friendly and ultra-fun-looking Public Quest system that allows everyone involved a fair shake at some cool loot that promises to always be tailored for their actual class. The Agency is developing a crafting system that's automated in a sense but also interacts with you and your surroundings as well. Champions Online is aiming at even more character customization, an even more active combat system and of course the mysterious Omega System which is purportedly going to do something big for soloing players. Could the soloing system be a revolution of sorts for MMOs? Could be, but what's important is that Cryptic is trying.

I'm glad to see these changes coming and while EverQuest was one of the first games to contain a complete package of features, it certainly wasn't the final word on MMO design. The future looks bright and I'm just glad that corpse runs, experience loss and endless spawn grinding have largely become things of the past.