Author: Vaga

   If you were thoroughly confused, troubled or otherwise emotionally scarred by Episode II of this wonderful little excursion into the depths of an inflamed gamer's mind, I am here to tell you - it isn't over. It couldn't be really - to be perfectly frank I am simply too silly a man to write a thousand words without making some cracks or insulting a furry animal. What I will, however, do for all you ninnies out there, is pause, take two breaths, say three "Ohm"s and try to recap with some minimal degree of logic and sanity whatever the hell it was that I was trying to tell you back there.

   Most MMOGs out there today suck. They'll claim they don't suck, but they suck. They will claim that they have come a long way, but they haven't. NVIDIA came a long way, maybe, but MMOGs - nope, they haven't. In fact, multiplayer versions of PC action games are starting, in essence, to play a lot like some MMOGs out there, which, pardon my French, is really f****ing disturbing, given the dream of living, breathing multiplayer worlds we've been sold.

   To be precise, the problem that really has me by my wee hairs is not so much with all massively multiplayer online games as it is with massively multiplayer online RPGs. Pure action MMO games, a later recruit to the MMO genre, have really started to bloom recently with the arrival of games like Battlefield, where team-based strategy and tactics added a distinctly more realistic and dynamic flavor to the action. MMORPGs, however, are nearly as much a mess as there were in the times of the first Ultima Online; as a matter of fact that very first UO still has a few things up on the latest contestants.

   But what specifically is it that I am talking about? What exactly is wrong? Fair question - lets enumerate a few things. We'll can start anywhere, anywhere at all - like, for instance, magic. Magic systems in use in most fantasy themed MMORPGs today are by and large the same magic systems pioneered by D&D games nearly two decades ago. There are flashier, prettier, and have some bells and whistles added on the side - some semi-creative ways to discover new spells, limitations on the number of active spells you can have at one time, etc. But the way magic affects the characters and players within the games has remained exactly the same - it seems game developers have read a single fantasy book and never bothered with another one. Magic is offensive (area or target), defensive (area or target) or utilitarian (make my rusty kettle shiny again). It's usually bound to a single magic point meter of some kind (I wonder if Gandalf the Grey had one), and it doesn't interact with the environment. Fire bolts fly into dry brush without so much as a spark and ice bolts leave green grass unperturbed. No one seems to want to bother to really explore things like complex interactions of multiple spells, creative ways of using defensive spells offensively and vice versa. No one is considering the possibility of using that shiny kettle spell on your shield to reflect fire bolts. No one is considering what actual sources of magic (other than the stupid MP bar!) it might be interesting to represent. How about directly using the environment to source magic power? Like drawing magic power for water related spells from lakes and streams, fire related spells from lava rocks and the sun, air spells from windy gullies...

   Or lets take questing. The thing that is commonly referred to as 'quests' in modern day MMORPGs is a shame upon the true meaning of the word. When exactly did running between towns carrying useless objects between useless NPCs has come to be known as a quest? That is a $3 an hour job for bicycled teenagers, not a quest. Neither is killing rabbits by the hundreds, or wolves by the dozen. No, not even goblins. Not a quest. Sorry. What is a quest? A quest is an involved, perilous, unique adventure; an adventure, mind you, that is usually undertaken by a character because it is part of his own story, his place in the world, his belief system. NOT because he needs that 70 silver for a new piece of armor he is saving up for. It's no wonder that so many of the older, more mature gaming demographic never stick with a MMORPG for too long: a world that defines your place in it by assigning you deliveries is not exactly something that people who look for more than just hack and slash in their gaming experience want to keep coming back to. World of Warcraft made a tiny, TINY - you hear?, but ultimately important step in the right direction in the area of questing - but very, very much more is truly needed. Upon cursory examination, one might frown at the idea of real quests in MMORPGs as "the blue sky", something that is not possible (or exceedingly difficult) to actually implement today. This is completely untrue, however. The fact of the matter is, proper questing could be implemented in any current MMORPGs without so much as a new line of code - all it would take is a dedicated, motivated community of players coupled with a little visionary leadership from those running the game. Literature is chock full wonderful adventures, intrigue, and mystery - core components of a true quest. These classic literary quest patterns can be easily adapted to multiplayer gaming - as they usually involve multiple characters, locations, motives, etc., all of which are inherent characteristics of MMORPGs - all that remains to be done is a mere "assigning of the roles." It's isn't quite that simple, of course, since the presence of live players can unexpectedly alter or complicate the storyline, but the general idea holds true. Some MMORPGs out there, such as Asheron's Call tried to tackle the problem at the gargantuan level, by staging massive invasions and other game-wide events. However, the scale of the undertaking was such that making the experience in any way deep or unique to a player was indeed a near impossibility and these events usually turned into massive slaughter. "Mid-size" quest experiences, involving a dozen to several dozen people each, and (importantly!) orchestrated by the player community itself, stand a chance to provide a much deeper and more individualized experience for all of the involved players.

   The examination of the questing problem in particular leads us to a useful generalization, which is that the problems with the current batch of massively multiplayer RPGs lie with the very factors that are supposed to make MMOGs such a unique genre - massive-multiplayerism and world persistence. Many of these games make such poor use of the massively multi-player aspect that they become, from the player interaction point of view, little more than glorified chat rooms augmented with rudimentary combat and item exchange. To make things worse, even this benefit usually comes at the price of greatly dumbed down gameplay mechanics as compared to most single-player PC RPGs. As a result, most serious RPG fans are actually better off (certainly from a cost point of view!) with a good (non-massively) multiplayer game, and pure actions fans will certainly have more fun hunting down some [insert favorite nationality here] ass in Battlefield 2. And who is left to consumer the Everquests and the World of Warcrafts? Chat room junkies.

   Things are equally bad on the world persistence count. The truth of the matter is that these online worlds create little that is actually WORTH persisting. Character stats? Player made items? I can have both of those things in any single-player RPG. Come on! Is this really what the promise of evolving online worlds was all about? The only real evolution that happens here is of the expansion pack based kind, and even than generally falls more into the realm of fixes and new features - not evolution. There is a difference.

   It is said that it is better to see once that to hear a hundred times. There is an example out there of a MMORPG done right - or certainly more right than most of the big MMORPGs out there. Remember all that crazy green creature talk? Remember flying kettles and big red ears? You are trying to forget, I know, but let it bubble up to the top of that rancid pile you call a brain just one last time. I am talking about A Tale In The Desert - by some counts, the only MMOG out there that has delivered in a non-negligible way on the true promise of the massively-multiplayer experience. And managed to do so, mind you, without any kind of support for combat, magic, or quests, in the traditional sense of the word. Now THAT is vision, my friends. Not to mention cahones grandes.

   A Tale In The Desert is a game of history - a kind of massively-multiplayer Civilization set in ancient Egypt. An instance of a single A Tale In The Desert game - or a "telling", which takes several real-time years, - starts out with a barren, sparsely populated world, with only a few readily available resources, and a few Schools and Universities - places where players come to learn new skills and contribute to the further development of knowledge and scientific advances. Then they begin to plow. In ATIDT, nothing is given or taken for granted. There is no established economy, no stores where you can just go and buy whatever you need, even if you have the cash. Everything in the game is player produced, and produced from scratch - you want a horse drawn cart? - start chopping trees. With what? Good question. Either use your hands, or travel to a School to learn the basics of metallurgy. Learn how to locate veins of metals in the ground, learn how to build a mine, how to smelt ore, how to make bricks by drying straw and mud in the sun, and how to build a small forge. Then, with some practice, you can make a blade, fashion it to a piece of wood and make an axe so that you can chop trees faster. By the way, you still don't know enough carpentry to make a cart (or boards, for that matter), you need to advance your metallurgy to make nails, and you have no idea where to get the actual horse. After the first several days of playing ATIDT, you invariably and clearly realize one thing: you need some help. ATIDT has the most real, productive and useful player community I have ever seen in a game. Guilds are not about putting a stupid insignia on you cloak (cloak? I hope you know how to grow and process flax!) or finding buddies for camping at spawn locations. They are about sharing knowledge, resources, and efforts in a very real, practical way. Expensive buildings can be shared by members of the guild, who can in turn combine their efforts on accomplishing the next goal. And what is the goal of all this? The goal is knowledge - one of the very few truly worthwhile goals that has ever been defined by mankind. The constant accumulation and advancement of knowledge constantly evolves the world of ATITD in very significant ways. Unlike with Everquest, World of Warcraft, Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot and countless others, logging in to ATIDT after a few months break will plunk you into a place that has truly moved along during your absence: there will be new communities, new resources, new technologies, new things to do, new ways to do old things better and new secrets to unearth. The world of ATITD is wonderful web of discoveries that the player keeps unwrapping step by step, layer by layer. THAT is the promise of the MMOG, the dream of the online gamer, the path of the Jedi.

   To be completely fair, ATITD is not quite a role-playing game in the traditional sense of the word. But honestly, we've really had enough of traditionalism. In an industry where we talk so much about creativity, it's time to step away from a few classical definitions. The truth is, the concepts of ATITD could be applied to the current batch of MMORPGs with absolutely brilliant results. We could have games with more purpose than level-climbing, more interaction than group hunting, more mystery and adventure than dungeon crawling.

   Soooooo, you ask, with a stretch. What exactly, you ask, with a somewhat blankish look on your tired, sleep deprived face, - is the meaning of this? For sure, you say, you've bitched quite royally here - but today, everybody is a critic. What's the point?

   The point is - don't just boldly go where everyone has gone before. This is an industry defined by the players - not by marketing - or it sure as hell ought to be. Don't just chow down on cardboard worlds for your fifteen bucks a month - as much as you may have grown to accept that price, you probably worked hard for that money. Don't accept a cheap substitute in place of something that has (still has, after all these years!) potential to really turn gaming on it's proverbial head. Play ATIDT, imagine the seemingly impossible, and demand greatness, GREATNESS, you hear?! from the next MMORPG you shell out money for. And remember that under that ugly mask, Darth Good Enough is still just a wrinkled old man with a repressed gaming dream.

   vaga*

   * to properly build up steam for this insanity of an article, Vaga has, over the years, played UO, EQ, AC, ACII, AO, DAoC, WoW, Lineage II, as well as a fair number of smaller massively multiplayer games. Vaga drinks heavily in his spare time. ATITD is the only massively online game he could continue with for over two months.