[MUD-Dev2] Fallen Earth

[Sean Howard]

"Tess Snider" <malkyne at gmail.com> wrote:

> The number of innovative MMO projects out there hasn't decreased at
> all.  What has decreased is their visibility.

Not to me. When I say that innovative MMO projects are less now, I'm
talking about my experiences which are broader and deeper than the average
WoW player's.

> To the extent that discourse has been "killed," I don't think it has
> anything to do with WoW.

It's not WoW's fault directly, anymore than the homogenization of the FPS
genre is Halo's fault. It took years for the genre to move out from under
DOOM's shadow, and now it's just crawled right back into Halo's. Years
later, FPS will once again leave Halo behind, risk a bit for a few years
with many successes and many more failures, and then some other game will
come out that collects all the successes under a single polished roof and
the FPS genre will be locked in that format for a while.

WoW's "inspirational reign" on MMOs is just about over and now it's time
for those few years of risk and experimentation, lest we lose the genre
completely.



> These days, between the growing population of MMO
> developers and the secrecy of the companies involved, there just isn't
> as much of a core community, anymore.

So, you are saying that people who live and breathe MMOs just stopped
being interested in talking about them? If that's even remotely true then
it is because MMOs have become less interesting to talk about, period.



> Are we all supposed to go advocate permadeath now, because resurrection
> is the dominant paradigm?

YES! EXACTLY! That is exactly what we are supposed to do! We are supposed
to look at what is out there and make a purposeful, intellectual decision
to find a different solution. More importantly, we need to find a
different PROBLEM.

Can you make permadeath work? What problems can you think of in which
permadeath would be the perfect solution? What if the player didn't die at
all? What if there was no risk to combat? Only success and failure,
equally valid advancement paths? What if there was no money, no experience
points, no levels? What if a player running out of hitpoints instead
killed someone else? What if there was no threat-tank-dps-healer model?
What if players had no physical impact on the world and instead
manipulated natural forces to influence the world? What if, instead of
fighting and dying, player advancement is based on exploration and
scientific advancement?

WoW has a bunch of really eloquent solutions, but it does so largely based
on the problems introduced in the hundreds of games that came before it.
Would WoW have such a perfect resurrection solution had it not been for
Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, and every single Aber, Diku, and LPmud
that came before it? We may not be able to solve THOSE problems better,
but we can certainly come up with better problems to solve. We can make a
better WoW simply by rethinking basic assumptions.



> My Prius has the same number of wheels as the wildly successful Model
> T.  It has headlights, contains an internal combustion engine, and was
> even made on an assembly line.  Does this represent a stagnation in
> automotive design?

No, but when you look at vehicles, you don't just have sedans. You have
planes, trains, horse drawn wagons, SUVs, trucks, hybrids, electric cars,
golf carts, skateboards, and even rickshaws. You just want to create
another Prius - which is great, if you like that sort of thing, but it
ain't going to deliver a payload into space and it is going to look mighty
out of place in colonial Williamsburg.

Beating WoW at its own game is going to be difficult because eventually
you reach a point of diminishing returns. How much nicer can you make a
mini-map? What class can you add to warrior, cleric, wizard, and rogue
that will be a meaning addition to a game built on tank, healer, dps?

Don't change the solution. Change the problem. Fallen Earth is doing
exactly that, and I have no doubt that they will find success. They've
already sewn up the pre-NGE SWG crafter market.


> Blizzard chose to build a sidewalk, because it looks better than bare
> dirt, and it makes it easier for the pedestrians to do business with
> them. If the guy in the next shop over doesn't build a sidewalk, the
> pedestrians may be less inclined to drop by his shop, next.

IF the guy is selling the exact same thing as Blizzard's shop. If Blizzard
is selling candy and the next shop over is selling health food, sidewalk
or not, both shops will be visited. More importantly, there's room for
two.

-- 
Sean Howard