It’s no coincidence that I’m sitting out MMOs for the most part.

In SW:G I was out and about one day and another player was rather needlessly rude to me. I tried to contact his guild leader and got told to bugger off.

They were at the time the top pvp guild on the server. I was leader of a small guild of 9 people. I declared war.

The guild war mechanic unlike Eve is consensual. We could only have a war if they flipped the switch at their end. They didn’t.

So I started a forum campaign of harassment and defamation, mocking their cowardice. They flipped the switch, murdered us, then foolishly left the switch on and went to bed.

Next day their leaders came back online to find that random people in their guild had been murdered and corpse camped continually for the last 20 hours. They turned off guild war so I took to the forums again to provoke them there.

Eventually we managed to destroy the Imperial bases in their home town. Biggest Imperial guild on the server, 100+ people massacred by 9 of us. Tactics were continually unexpected and underhanded, including manipulating a coalition of Rebel guilds into attacking them while we pushed our private Imp v Imp guild war.

I noticed recently that people are still talking about it, 5 years on.

Good times.

I’ve recently reviewed Eve at my blog with some analysis of the social complexity (mostly stuff you’ve already seen privately Gordon but it may be of interest to some of your readers).

I have yet to do anything dramatic in Eve but there is a truly evil plan in the pipeline. Unfortunately if it succeeds I won’t be able to blog about it until after I’ve finished milking the suckers. Mwa ha ha!

I also think player interaction lost in modern MMOs. In LOTRO people often do not recognize players talking to them even if they are speaking directly in front of them. OK, probably more a problem of the chat system. But does it not show that we have become ! quest guided objects in a beautiful colored wallpaper world?

DikuMUDs also seem to come with “wallpaper worlds” that allow almost zero interaction with the environment. besides some glowing resource harvesting nodes.

Take a look at how mining and lumberjacking worked in Ultima Online, how housing was done. There was nothing like a “zone” concept, and the artificial “unholy trinity” did not dumb down player minds. It should never have escaped from pen and paper to computers.

Though those examples you gave are fascinating in that they develop in the gaps and grow into something huge. But I’d agree, if MMOs remain linear and formulaic, they won’t inspire or incite - it’s the unique elements that do that, not the marketable KPIs or ‘must haves’ that are becoming part and parcel of the gameplay.

Epic and differential play might make memories and give us something to talk about around the watercooler, but increasingly, it seems to be the money that talks most.
At least, that’s the way it looks right now, which leads to that shift in the “pain or gain” you’re talking about.

The MMO market was a relatively new space that held greater potential a few years back. When SWG first came out, for example, it was a game with scope. Too much scope, it was felt, and apparently too much “pain”. So they added directions. Pathways. Simple elements like animals found spawning regularly in the same area. Streamlined and “dumbed down” character development. Less organic and multi-faceted play.

The response from the playerbase, clearly, was that there was now less “gain”.

It became something that could be compared to other games, easily understood by any player of any age, and, presumably, easier to get the behind the scenes talent to maintain (since it was translatable). It changed to ‘fit’, and to survive in a market that was suddenly being filled with competitors.

And it sucked.

Though SWG has made something of a comeback since, it’s still largely systematized and “translatable”, but is giving more tools for diversity and individualization. This will culminate soon - I’m hanging for the Chronicles system, which is soon to be implemented, and will give some potential for things to grow in the gaps. Unique things will start to generate.

My most inspiring moment in game was a send-off for my player city when, thanks to the above changes and the appeal of a newly released EQ2, alot of my fellow guildies left.
It wasn’t so much the help we got from ‘Pex’ in placing spawns to fight amongst the streets that made it, it was the random spawning of the natural wildlife - kimogila - that decided to get involved and took everything to the next level. And it was the roleplay it generated, both during the event and for years after. It’s become part of the PA’s lore - the battle, and the fact that we shared the area with kimogila, who had also chosen the surrounds for a breeding ground.

An individual story.

Epic doesn’t involve encounters with ‘iconic’ elements, as the focus can often be in an MMO based on an existing story. Using the “epic” furniture of a core story already told is like taking something else that was epic and brushing up against it.

Depth. Complexity. Immersion. A sense of something unique and personal. These are things that will make something truly epic.

These are the ingredients that make MMOs great - taking the tools provided and having the space to make your own reality.

After a narrowing of options, the fact that SWG’s heading back in that direction means I’m chuffed.

Then the opening of “Darkness Falls” for your realm and clearing if of the opposing realm - total fun and excitement. I miss those days! I still think they had the best PvP ruleset ever or since. EVE is a close second, but the “cost of entry” in terms of learning curve were so much lower in DAoC that far more people could experience first hand the excitement and fun associated with large scale PvP battles.

Damn… I’ve almost convinced myself to re-subscribe to play on the classic servers… yikes.

no.

I guess a more honest answer is “sort of”. I don’t mind being part of the bigger picture but I think I’m content for the bigger picture to be in the background. Watching people conquer the world doesn’t inspire me; I’m quite comfortable in my little Hobbit hole.

I just got killed by a giant grashopper in my LOTRO trial. Then I went to toilet, rather disappointed. Then read you want to hear our MMO stories. This is my story.

But do not worry, I have a better one! I once killed another player with the help of a friend to cash in the bounty. We organized a wrestling & bandaging sparring fight for training with the victim. Without armor, of course. So we met near in the woods near the town of Vesper, close to the sea. The idea was to give him little routes of escape. Meliadus the Black Fool and I had battle axes and heavy crossbows with us. We trained for a few minutes. It was a good training, after all. Then there was a good opportunity for assassination, he was almost dead and wanted to bandage, I suddenly whacked him with the battle axe. He ran away and Meliadus who was watching the fight shot him in the back, finishing him. He also shot his horse, which was kinda unncessary.

I took the victim’s head (use knife on corpse - creates a mess, but no other way to get the head) and we ran away. The guy was seriously upset and vowed ME eternal revenge. I want to point out, Meliadus was helping me, but nobody blamed him.

Then we wanted to cash in the head. It turned out that I misread the date of the bounty. It was already outdated and they did not want to pay us. German and English dates are written differently. I thought 06/08 was the 6th of August, but actually they meant the 8th of June.

The other guild was so upset about this that they killed my guildmates on sight. They never got me, till some demanded that I should finally die so that they stop harrassing our newbies.

Enjoy.

I think Champions Online is going to be my thing because it combines the single online persistent world (no separate servers) with a decent PvP system, while letting me directly control my avatar and run around in the world. It also doesn’t look to subscribe to the “holy trinity” model, which none of my absolute favorite games have…UO, SWG. I might have played WoW longer than I did either of those, but I still rank it third in terms of enjoyment and nostalgia/memories.

I want to impact the world; I want people to know my name. Even if it’s in a limited circle. “The big picture” is lost in a lot of games these days because of artificial limits placed on the game world by developers in order to keep “griefers” controlled, and I am tired of living in a carebear MMO where the biggest impact I can have in the world is how well-known I am in Trade Chat. Le sigh.