[MUD-Dev2] genre vs creativity [was: Rant against Vanguard]

[cruise]

Thus spake Mike Rozak...
> And yes, I am holding the genre against a genre game, which is why I 
> said that perhaps I'm not the right player for Vanguard. Vanguard is a 
> quintessential MMORPG, and I dislike it for that. It doesn't seem to 
> strive for anything more (except, perhaps, diplomacy).
> 
> Side comment with oblique reference to Raph Koster's comment about 
> extinction: Part of the reason that Adventure games are a nearly-dead 
> genre is because they're stuck in the genre defined by Myst (puzzles in 
> a pretty first-person world) and Kings Quest (sometimes-unintuitive 
> tasks that must be completed in a third-person world). Evolve or become 
> extinct. To greatly oversimply things, Vanguard is just EQ1 with a 
> higher polygon count.

I think this is actually a valid criticism. I had similar thoughts about 
Archlord attempting to be WoW (no, don't worry, I didn't pay for it. I 
was reviewing it for a magazine :) - there's nothing /bad/, necessarily, 
about not being inventive, but there's nothing /good/ about it either. 
And when the players already have a game they enjoy, why would they 
switch to another one that plays exactly the same?

> I suppose my POV is that the purpose of the newbie area is to teach me 
> the basics of playing the game. A game doesn't need to start characters 
> out as an impoverished wimps just to hold up genre norms.

<snip>

> I think that as one of the brand-new features, (as opposed to combat, 
> which is a well-known feature) diplomacy should have been introduced and 
> emphasized early on. Again, the genre says that combat is the 
> meat-and-potatoes of MMORPGs and that your first quest should be to kill 
> 10 rats, on a dark and stormy night.

<snip>

> IMHO, part of the reason to give players the option of race and clothing 
> is that race and clothing say something about the player's personality. 
> In the MMORPG genre definition, however, race and clothing (aka: armor) 
> is about abilities and numbers.

Many of these have been discussed here before - making your players feel 
heroic right from the start (LotRO and CoH both do a good job of this); 
reducing the emphasis on or necessity for combat; taking away the 
reliance on phat loot for player progression.

All of these have been recognised as areas ripe for change and 
variation. Why are current mainstream MMO's carrying on with the same 
cliches?