Bioware Austin talks about MMORPG

[Morgoth]

Please Left-Mouse-click once here! Thank you!

 

 

GFW: One of the big problems with MMO gameplay is repeating the same content, or same instance if you're specifically talking about WoW, over and over again ... .

 

JO: That's something we don't want to encourage. We want to encourage players to continue to make progress in their story, to do new quests, consume new content, constantly move forward. The grind is not attractive in any way. Going and killing the same dragon over and over again is not something I want to do. There are lots of different ways to encourage players to move forward. Simply putting more weight on storytelling experience points is a good way to do that. In WOW, you get XP when you finish a quest, but the weighting on that is pretty low; there's not much benefit to doing that over finding the perfect monster to grind and kill. If those quest experience points were a little higher, it would make a lot more sense to go along with the story. Now, that's a very mechanical way to ensure players go along with your story -- the other way is to make sure your story is good, that the presentation is exciting, it's personal to the player, that the player has a lot of motivation to move forward in their story. That's not to say that experience and treasure aren't still important, though.

 

Story-based MMORPG, somewhat contradicting. But if Bio cracks the nut and people buy that, they can throw Blizzard from the throne.

 

Discuss, you MMORPG lovers you!

Edited November 27, 2006 by Morgoth

[Sand]

I hate MMORPGs.

 

Only MMORPG I would play is if it had no monthly fee, like Guild Wars.

[Morgoth]

What now? Do you hate MMORPGs or the monthly fees?

[Jorian Drake]

What now? Do you hate MMORPGs or the monthly fees?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I guess he hates to pay for something ^_^

[Wistrik]

The premise is interesting, but what'll make or break it is the type of player they allow on the servers. Having played Diablo 2 online for a few years, I'm familiar with the heathens that can quickly populate a server and ruin the experience for others. Either by hacking, cheating, player-killiing, harrassing, or otherwise ruining the ability to roleplay and have a good time. Sure, we could, and did, create passworded games so only trusted players could join us, but that's not, to my knowledge, something you can do in a MMORPG.

 

I'll play the wait and see game with this one. It'd be nice to finally find a MMORPG worth spending money on, but until then I'm sticking to singleplayer games.

[Sand]

What now? Do you hate MMORPGs or the monthly fees?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I have played and paid for many MMORPGs:

 

Anarchy Online

Ultima Online

Star Wars Galaxies

Dungeons and Dragons Online

and a few others...

 

None of them were worth the monthly fee because none of them had what I look for in a RPG. So I guess the answer is yes to both.

Edited November 27, 2006 by Sand

[Morgoth]

I've tried out WOW (14 day trial for 2

Edited November 27, 2006 by Morgoth

[Maria Caliban]

I consistantly buy BioWare games. I picked up a X-Box when Jade Empire came out, I intend to get a X-Box 360 when Mass Effect is released, and I've followed Dragon Age for several years now.

 

That said, the chances of me picking up this title are extremely low. I'm willing to pay for a game once and maybe pick up expansion packs. I won't pay a monthly fee because I won't be playing any game for months on end.

Edited November 27, 2006 by Maria Caliban

[Kaftan Barlast]

Story-based MMORPG, somewhat contradicting.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Oxymoron-class. You cant have a story in an MMO any more than you can in a game of QuakeIII. Sure, you can create a story that "generic grindquest instance 356" is about killing some evil person in order to..whatever, but since you kind of go back and kill that same person 50times in the average MMO, that kind of goes out the window.

 

 

The only way you can make an MMO with story is to step outside of the norms of the MMO genre, and no publisher would pay you to do that when they think someones sitting on the next WoW.. which was a game that did exactly what every other MMO did

[Krookie]

Eh, MMOs tend to bore me. I mean, what's the point of leveling up a skill for 6 hours? Sure, you're skill level is higher, but what doest that really do for you?

 

I'd rather go fishing in real life and catch a real fish and then really cook it, and then really eat it.

 

A couple kids in my grade practically worship WoW, and I've heard them complain a couple times about stuff like "wow, I spent like 4 hours killing orcs last night to raise [whatever stat they were talking about]" I asked him why you would want to do that in the first place, and then asked why he just didn't stop when he realized it was boring.

 

He said something about how he needed to do it to get to some other thing so he could complete some other quest so he could get some other item to help him get more hitpoints or something.

 

I just don't see why people do it.

Edited November 27, 2006 by Krookie

[The Named One]

I'll never again get into a game that is, at its heart, endless. Seems MMOs are characterized by this quality, so I don't think I'll ever play another one again, no matter how 'cracked' the formula is.

[Maria Caliban]

Krookie:

"He said something about how he needed to do it to get to some other thing so he could complete some other quest so he could get some other item to help him get more hitpoints or something. "

 

I think you've hit on a great point here and it's one of the reasons why some RPGs resonate with me and others don't. MMORPGs are often metagamey.

 

I don't go out and kill goblins because they're threatening the town; I go out and kill goblins because that raises my 'kill goblin' skill. I feel the same way about the Elder Scrolls. It's not that learn by doing is bad, it's that I'm killing things and jumping up and down a hundred times to increase a skill, not because my character has any motivation to kill things or jump up and down.

[Llyranor]

Just because genuinely dynamic storytelling hasn't been done in a MMO before doesn't mean it can't be done.

 

I don't think Bioware will be the one to pull it off, though. Not anytime soon, in any case.

[Hurlshort]

Actually, in my eyes WoW has pushed the idea of storytelling in MMO's forward. The game is much more dependant on quests than previous MMO's. It isn't until you get into the upper levels that "grinding" really becomes necessary. In fact, my highest level character is only 54 because I refuse to do anything that isn't directly related to a quest. Sure, some of the quests are generic kill 10 skeletons, but I still see those in single player games too.

 

The problem isn't with storytelling, it's with character impact upon the world. WoW tells quite a few stories, and it even has a few in game cinematics, but you're not making an actual impact on the gameworld. There is no easy solution to this problem.

[alanschu]

I consistantly buy BioWare games. I picked up a X-Box when Jade Empire came out, I intend to get a X-Box 360 when Mass Effect is released, and I've followed Dragon Age for several years now.

 

That said, the chances of me picking up this title are extremely low. I'm willing to pay for a game once and maybe pick up expansion packs. I won't pay a monthly fee because I won't be playing any game for months on end.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Well, then you won't be paying for it months on end.

[Hurlshort]

It's odd that you are willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a system to play Bioware games, but that $15 a month is unthinkable.

[Maria Caliban]

A which will allow me to play hundreds of other games. $15 a month will only let me play one game.

 

If Jade Empire were the only game on X-Box or Mass Effect the only game on X-Box 360, I wouldn't bother. It's much like the video card I bought "for" Oblivion; I invest the money for one game but knowing that there are many other games that I'll be able to play because of that investment

[Volourn]

"A which will allow me to play hundreds of other games."

 

You own 100s of xbox games? WOWSERS!

[Maria Caliban]

I own ~twenty five and I've rented a dozen.

 

Still, it *allows* me to play hundreds of games, even if I'm not interested in playing all of them.

[Llyranor]

I like playing games, rather than knowing that I have the capacity to play them.

 

But that's just me.

[Maria Caliban]

Llyranor:

"I like playing games, rather than knowing that I have the capacity to play them.

 

But that's just me."

 

You only say that because you have the capacity to play them. You need the capacity before you can play.

[Pop]

A developer talks about how his upcoming genre game is different and more ambitious than those other ones?

 

Color me dazzled

[Wistrik]

*fires a prismatic ray at Pop*

 

Developers are always promising new and better, and then you get to watch the options drop off one by one as ship date approaches. I'll give them credit though, at least they aren't afraid to think big. Someday it'll happen.

[Hurlshort]

I have a couple friends who stick primarily to MMO's, one is on WoW and the other CoH. It's worth it for them because it keeps them from buying a new game every month. Obviously, everyone has different tastes. Typically I play an MMO for a few months, cancel, and then re-up if I feel the desire to play again. The only exceptions were WoW and AC1, as they were incredibly engaging at the time and I found myself playing well over the amount I consider necessary for $15.

[Maria Caliban]

The last time I gave a company my CC# so they could charge me monthly, I ended up being burned. How was I to know that asiancutiesh4rdc0rzz.com wasn't a reputable business?