[MUD-Dev] Re: What is an MMOG? (was: MMO Communities)

[ceo]

HRose wrote:

> The fact is that we are loosing the "massive" aspect. Diablo 2
> isn't a MMOG because, despite it IS persistent, it's still not
> massive.

We at Grex classify Diablo2 as an MMOG, albeit a slender one. The
key issue for us is whether the instances are linked, and to what
extent. The facts that:

  - items persist completely (NB: character advancement is
  irrelevant in D2, it's items that dominate)

  - players can and do socialise and arrange games whilst in the
  game

- players can communicate (IM) across instances

....and the meta-game that these allow to emerge (c.f. below)
together make it a perfectly valid MMOG. It could certainly be
improved (as an MMOG) by making the inter-instance linking
richer. For instance, it's not all that far away from being MS
Hearts Online, where you have no control over who you play against,
very limited communication, and no way to organize, arrange things,
meet new people, or build up relationships.

However, your claim that it's not "massive" and hence not an MMOG is
one I cannot understand. It would help if you defined what you meant
by massive, since you obviously don't mean the physical term ;) and
nor do you mean what I would mean - tens of thousands of players in
the same game.

NB: under the definition we use at Grex, if items did not persist
from instance to instance then it would not be an MMOG. As it is,
because they do, the *real* game that people are playing is NOT an
8-player monty-haul (I think you may have naively assumed that is
all there is to it?).

What actually happens is that when you play online you are no longer
playing D2 but are playing a meta-game (well, a few people continue
to play D2, but the vast majority don't). This meta-game involves
trading with a playerbase of hundreds of thousands, building clans,
arranging times and places to play co-operatively, setting up
challenges, free-form chatting, etc. Um...does that description
remind you of anything? ;).

Or, in summary:

   D2 without battle-net (i.e. LAN-only) != MMOG

   D2 with battle-net == MMOG

> Griefing happens when a game is designed badly.

*Only* when a game is designed badly?

> PvE could be a lot more but till now the tendency is about going
> back to Diablo. For me this means that MMOG have "failed". We hit
> a wall and noone was able to understand how to cross it. Now we
> are going backwards. I believe that PvE could be a lot more. A
> lot. But

I think that's insulting and inaccurate. Diablo was a great
achievement in games design - it took an extemely simplistic design
and made it extremely addictive. Perhaps the only mistake they made
was not to charge a subscription for Realm play :). D2 still gets
several things right that many MMOG's never have, and it should IMHO
certainly not be regarded as a step "backwards" to borrow ideas from
it.

> what I still see is a leap backwards. Games like CoH represent the
> failure of the MMOG ideal. They are successful because they toss
> away what a MMOG is to go back to the fun, cooperative arcade.

I think what you mean is "because they toss away my personal narrow
selfish view of what I want to play when I'm online". I don't mean
those words insultingly, just literally (i.e. "selfish" in it's
literal meaning, not as a character judgement!).

It's often observed that one of the major problems facing MMOG
designers is the wildly varying and oft conflicting wishlists of
their target audiences :).

Adam M
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