[MUD-Dev2] [Design] Dinosaurs evolve to chickens, MMOs evolve to massively single-player games

[cruise]

Damion Schubert wrote:
> I actually think that the potential to play solo -does- explain the success
> of World of Warcraft.  Before WoW came out, too many designers were
> utterly in love with the idea that playing with other people was MANDATORY.
> EQ and EQ2 required grouping for any sort of non-tedious advancement.
> UO and SWG had huge, complex economies predicated upon players
> depending on other players to provide goods and services you needed.
> Shadowbane and DAoC's best features depended solely on having the
> player base on any given server reach critical mass, so you could enjoy
> the pvp/raid game.  Soloing in all of them kind of sucked.

*cough*City of Heroes*cough* :P

> In my personal opinion, the answer is NOT to make purely solo
> or small-group 'MMO' experiences - you are then competing with the
> people who can make those games faster and cheaper than
> you, because you're not trying to tackle all of the infrastructure
> an MMO requires.  To me, the answer is to provide a solid solo/
> small group backbone to the game, but have those paths lead
> to a truly 'massive' experience that only the MMO experience
> can provide.

This is the second time this sentiment has been expressed - that you
don't have to be teamed with people for them to add to the game world,
and I think it's a point worth noting.

Generally I think it's tempting, and I've done this myself, to consider
anyone you're not currently playing with as irrelevant, but that's not
true - I know people unused to MMO's find the idea that all the other
characters running around on the screen are being controlled by other
people quite amazing, and I suspect that an element of that remains even
once the initial awe is gone.

Even if you don't interact with anyone else in game, their presence does
add a sense of scale and life that are otherwise missing from
single-player games, even with the advances of AI and story-telling.
What techniques are there to build on that "background", to better let
players appreciate it? Do we even want to do that, or is it best left in
the background?