[MUD-Dev] Q&A with Ken Troop, Lead Designer at Turbine

[Mike Shaver]

On Jul 20, Threshold RPG wrote:
> On 29 Jun 2003, at 14:27, Michael Tresca wrote:

>>   Ken Troop: First, D&D Online is the real thing. Almost all
>>   MMORPG's derive their character systems from a D&D model, but
>>   only D&D Online will offer players the opportunity to create a
>>   character that plays and feels like your original D&D
>>   character.

> Huh? Bad online games derive their combat model from the extremely
> simplistic (great for pen and paper) D&D combat model.

> Most MMORPGs I have played (and most muds) have extremely complex
> combat systems that are nothing like D&D whatsoever.

"character system" != combat model, though.  I'm sure we can have
lots of great historical back-and-forth about the origin of the
class-level-race XP-advancement model, but it seems to me that his
claim is pretty credible.

> In the MMORPGs I have played things are often quite frantic.  They
> do not involve sitting back and watching the show.

Well, he's just coming off a game that was rounding criticized for
having fire-and-forget combat, so maybe he's just projecting a
little.  For a lot of MMORPGs, though, you _can_ succeed in combat,
at least PvE, if you just hit your character's auto-attack button
and wait.  You won't be able to take on stuff that's really all that
challenging, but it is a viable low-attention-investment approach to
an unfortunately large number of games.  To say nothing of macro'd
spawn farming and bots, but I guess that's different sort of
"watching the show".

> For the most part, the answers sounded like marketing talking
> points more than facts about the game itself. :(

Of course they were; it's a pre-any-meaningful-milestone interview
with a softball questioner, as a way for both to capitalize on the
audience's neophilia and affection for the D&D brand.  Surely you
weren't expecting a cross-examination! =)

Mike
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