[MUD-Dev] Retention without Addiction?

[shren]

On Fri, 6 Dec 2002, Koster, Raph wrote:
> From: Matthew Dobervich
>> From: shren
 
>>> Reminds me of Anarchy Online's "enter and get your own copy of
>>> the dungeon" - I believe Destination Games was discussing
>>> something similar, where you go in and get your own copy of the
>>> "dungeon".  (They used an amusement park ride analogy.)  All
>>> you'd have to do is time-limit the dungeon entry and you'd have
>>> similar features in your MMORPG.
 
>> Worlds of Warcraft is planning to do the same thing.

> I hadn't heard that WoW was planning on doing this; I know Anarchy
> Online did it, and I know Tabula Rasa plans to do it.
 
> And I think it's a terrible idea in all cases. Sure, if what you
> want to make is lobbies for small multiplayer games, great. But ya
> know, i think that you'll end up with a worse shared environment
> than a MUD/MOO, and a worse party-sized adventure experience than
> Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate II, or other games of their ilk
> (no way you'll make enough to match that quantity and quality of
> content AND feed the desires of an online world audience!). On top
> of that, this notion seems to me to miss key elements of what
> makes online worlds appealing.

It also misses key elements of what makes online worlds unappealing.
Key sites of interest are always packed with people when there's
only one of them.  Being alone in dungeon deep loses it's immersion
when dungeon deep is actually more crowded with players than
anywhere else in the online world.

> Has nobody heard the rants about how AO's self-contained mission
> areas are dull, repetitive, and non-immersive? It is in large part
> BECAUSE they are self-contained, abstracted from the larger
> world. Has nobody read Jonathan Baron's Glory and Shame article
> and realized that part of the attraction of these games is to be
> able to publicly glory in what you accomplished? Hard to do if
> nobody else can SEE it.

Just because AO did not do it well, does not mean that it can not be
done well.  Don't pretend it's impossible to do well because you
don't like it.  Moore's law makes suprising things possible, in
time.

> Sure, there's merit to embedding mini-games--and let's not mistake
> it, that's what these are--into online worlds. But to make them
> the primary content seems to me like it's plain old missing the
> point of why make something an online world in the first place.

I live near a city because sometimes I want to go out into the city
and do things and meet people.  Everything about my job could be
done from the middle of the Arizona desert.  I stay here because I
like that if I wanted to go out and meet new people, I could.
Generally, I don't.  I do things either by myself or with specific
people most of the time.

Just because I want to be a part of something larger (a mud) doesn't
mean that I want to interact with the the masses every moment of my
time in the mud.  Because the masses, while interesting every once
in a while, tend to get on your nerves.  They are the same masses
that made each other's lives miserable in UO untill UO got
kindergardenized.  They are the same masses that by and large have a
very dim conception of what the word 'role playing' means.  They are
strangers.

There are no private parties.  There are no private places except
homes, which tend to be very small.  You can't rent convention
halls.  You are jammed in with the teeming herd 100% of your time in
your game of choice, which explains why said teeming herd tends to
act like rats packed into a too-small cage.  If you want to get away
from the crowd, the only thing to do is to quit playing.

I like the idea of both being able to do things by myself or in a
small group, while at the same time having the option to go into a
larger universe where everybody is.

> The core audience for this genre doesn't want amusement park
> rides. They want to feel like they are THERE.

THERE is overrated.  In THERE, people are waiting in line like
shoppers to fight an 'epic battle'.  In THERE, all the monsters have
been killed and it's empty.  In THERE, there's someone lurking to
kill you.

THERE feels more like a tourist trap than, oh, say, a dungeon.  I've
by and large quit playing MMORPGs because I haven't seen a THERE
worth being in for a long time.  It's not the THERE that's broken,
but the fact that everyone else is there, too.


_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev