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The Daily Grind: Are dragons, zombies, or pirates the most overused?
In every fantasy MMO (and many of the other ones, too), you'll be assured to encounter three types of enemies. There will be dragons. There will be zombies. And because game developers are 12-year-old kids at heart, there will be pirates. The question is, which of these three is the most overused? Which have worn out their welcome the most to you? My vote is for dragons. Yes, they're huge, ferocious creatures that are often raid end bosses, but when every game has them as their ultimate threat, it dilutes one's proper respect of them. It's like every MMO has a Death Star. More of a big bad doesn't increase fear in the same ratio; it kind of has the opposite effect. But maybe you disagree. Pirates, zombies, or dragons -- which make you roll your eyes the most? Which would you banish to the land of well-worn tropes? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Tamriel Infinium: Horizontal vs. vertical progression and the Elder Scrolls Online
The week before last, I talked about a hybrid penalty, and I've realized that I did so without actually talking about how progression is slated to work in Elder Scrolls Online. Because ESO wants to emulate the existing Elder Scrolls games in an MMO, we see many of the same ideas ported directly from the single-player game into the online game. This includes training up in a specific weapon and armor, weapon swapping, and skill-based progression. And if you have played other games' skill-based or non-linear progression systems, then you know about the difficulties of balance. ESO, like other games before it, tackles this imbalance by limiting the number of abilities available to a player at a given time. Skill progression also takes an interesting turn in ESO as well, and I'm not exactly sure how to define it. Most MMOs follow a vertical progression tree in which you place the game's version of skill points in an upward-growing tree or pyramid, with skills following a guided path to the best skill of a given tree at the top. Usually the limitations placed on these trees are based on level, which gives you a finite number of earnable skill points. I call this vertical progression. Although any good class skill system will have some branches to the side, usually the ultimate goal is to reach the top of the tree to gain the best abilities in that given class. Thankfully, Elder Scrolls Online takes a different approach.
The Soapbox: My lore problem
"In the distant forests of El'quen, a dark evil stirs. Marrowgore the Unhunter, imprisoned for a thousand years in Cauldron Lake by the Eye of Son'drak, has broken free. Now, he and his evil BoneSlurpers stage an all-out war on the United Provinces. You, a freshly christened hero known for valorous acts both on and off the battlefield, must take charge of the Sacred Axeblade of Loqtai, harness the power it contains, and send the Unhunter back to his watery prison. "But first, can you get me nine wolf pelts?"
The Daily Grind: Is magic too common?
Maybe I think about these things too much and should just give in to the tropes, but it often bothers me how prevalent and common magic is in MMOs. I grew up reading loads of fantasy books where magic was a difficult talent to cultivate and amazing when it was performed. But that's not how it is in MMOs, is it? Our magically apt characters already start out with a full array of spells and are granted new ones with nary a training sequence. And even if you aren't a mage, the fantasy worlds themselves are so littered with magic that navigating them becomes an exercise in not going blind from all the particle effects. It's kind of like cell phones: When you think about them, they're amazing, but they're also so common that they don't impress anyone any more. Is magic too common in MMOs? Would you be open to a game that treated the occurrence and acquisition of magic as a rare and life-changing event instead of a never-ending laser light show? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: What fantasy trope should be retired from MMOs?
Tropes: MMOs are chock-full of them. From pirates running rampant in every fantasy setting to the "save the world from cranky dragons" narrative, it seems like developers go to the same well for inspiration more often than not. Sometimes that's OK, because we do like the familiar and to see if these game creators can do something unique with them. But sometimes enough is enough. So what fantasy trope should be retired from MMOs? My vote is and always has been for giant spiders. It's not that I'm creeped out by them or anything, it's just that I'm so very, very tired of seeing them in every game. Not only are they physically impossible, but it seems like a cheap method to try to induce a bit of squirmy apprehension instead of actually working for it. Yes, your game has big spiders. Congrats. You're as special as white bread. What say you? What trope would you like to see banished, never to return? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Enter at Your Own Rift: Song of a superhero
When it comes to fantasy MMOs, we've been there so long and done that so often that we hardly think about the framework that supports these worlds and our assumptions about them. This is doubly the case when it comes to who we are: We are always talented warriors or wizards who are out to do noble good deeds and get all, like, awesome and stuff. But we are mortal. We are people, just the best of people. We have adventuring spirits. Except that this doesn't quite apply to RIFT. When you really look at it, our characters in RIFT aren't generic adventurers. Who we are is not only clearly stated time and again but made an integral part of the game and its story. It's an important distinction that's worth examining. We are Ascended. Another word for that is "superhero."
The Daily Grind: What stock fantasy tropes bore you to death?
There are certain fantasy elements that just seem to come up time and again, no matter the game. With fantasy being the dominant genre for MMOs, even less-traditional fantasy games such as RIFT tend to fall into certain standard models. Elves and Dwarves run about, with the former in forests and the latter in mountains. Warhammer Online draws upon some of the setting's unique flavor, but amidst the Chaos, cults we still find savage Orcs, good High Elves, and super-evil Dark Elves. Reading enough fantasy and playing enough fantasy games can start to feel like rehashes of the same material at times, since so many different games draw from the same well. So what fantasy tropes particularly get under your skin? Is it a certain set of racial traits, a tendency toward the same sort of stories in quests, or just a general feel? Whether you love or hate fantasy settings, what tropes of the genre bore you to death? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Perfect Ten: Weird staples of every fantasy MMO
If you take some weird, outlandish, or out-of-the-ordinary item and then saturate your life with it, sooner or later the bizarre becomes the accepted norm. So much so, in fact, that you'd cease to even think about it. I mean, do we ever question those magic boxes known as "microwaves" that mysteriously heat up our foods? Does anyone blink twice anymore when small computers tell us how to drive instead of nagging spouses? What about Carrot Top? Likewise, fantasy MMORPGs have erected trope after trope that we no longer question -- or even notice. Actually, the only time we'd notice one of these is if a game failed to include it. No matter how illogical and sometimes silly these MMO staples are when you think about them, we've been around them so long that we would no more notice them as we would the individual keyboard buttons that we type on daily. Still... you're thinking about them right now, aren't you? Those keys, cruelly dominated by your pecking fingers, pushing them back into place. What a techno-bully you are! In any case, come with us as we count down 10 weird staples that every fantasy MMO seems to include.
Breakfast Topic: What Tropes does your character embody?
Ok, I'm going to make sort of a pretty geeky confession here: I have been known to read TV Tropes. In fact, I have been known to waste hours that could have been better spent writing (or raiding) reading TV Tropes. For those of you who do not know what TV Tropes is, I'll explain in short: it's a wiki in which the contributors look for common themes and cliches present in modern pop culture and fiction, document them, and categorize them. Of course, rather than give the Tropes simple names, part of the fun seems to be giving your tropes fanciful and offbeat names. Big Lipped Alligator Moment, anyone? How about Contemplate our Navels?
