[MUD-Dev] ghost mode

[ceo]

Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com wrote:

> Why shouldn't an MMO launch with >100 quests for each player to
> perform? They can be the same for each player and often require
> co-operation. I wouldn't care if I had to do the same interesting
> quest a few times to help friends through etc. Furthermore they
> need to be signposted, as in the typical MMO there is so little
> guidance you don't even know where to find the entertainment.

...and gives rise to something that always makes me laugh at events
like GDC, ECTS, etc: people wander up to a great big flashy Sony
stand and find a free console with big LCD running EQ, and start to
play (or AO, etc...most of them seem to make it to show floors
sooner or later :)).

Most people give up after 30 seconds, bored out of their skull by
these 100% non-intuitive games, with no help, no guidance, no menus,
no idea what the heck you are doing. I've seen people struggle for a
couple of minutes, and get asked by others "Cool, how do you playe
this?". The answer is normally a tragic "I don't have a clue. I did
once manage to attack something - I think - when I first started by
randomly pressing buttons, but I've spent the last 5 minutes trying
to work out how to do that again. That's the only reason I've been
here so long."

Obviously, it's a different genre etc, but how many self-respecting
single-player games would go up on a great big stand at a major show
knowing that most people who don't already own the game won't have
clue what's going or find anything to do? AO at least looked pretty
- you could wander off and look at a sunset in the woods etc - but
it also was very very very dull wandering around this entirely
empty, albeit beautiful, world.

When even the "pre-alpha" singleplayer games can be understood quite
quickly - games where the stall staff don't want anyone touching
them because they're so likely to crash/reboot/do something that
looks stupid, and the only way you get to them is mid-way through a
battle or something, with no docs etc - and yet still are more
interesting than an MMOG, I do sometimes wonder if MMOG's could do
better :). Surely there's *some* interesting part of the world that
the show-floor demo could start characters in? Chuckle.

Adam M
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