Well in pen & paper RPGs, if the GM designed and planned something, then by god, it was going to be used. If MMOs want to follow this route they just need to be as good as human GMs at hiding the inevitability of the linear storyline.

 

-----signature-----

This. I agree that phasing was probably necessary in the case of the DK for the reasons you cited. I don't see any reason for it to be necessary for, say, a level 1 worgen or goblin, not to mention a level 80 character of any race/class.

I like the open-world feel you get with MMOs. I don't feel like I'm getting that with phased questing. Take the starter area for worgen on PVP servers, for example. I understand *why* they're doing it, and while I hate the idea of griefers baseraping the starter areas, that's part of playing on a PVP server.

To me, phasing/linear quest lines should be a means to an end, as we saw with the DK starter zone, not a matter of course.

 

-----signature-----

But forget the difficulty in producing enough content for a moment. What was it most of us old-timers liked about P&P RPGs? That the PLAYERS made the story by deciding what they wanted to do and where to go and what to do when they got there. The players made the story.

The players made the story in UO, too. And EVE. Two sandbox mmorpgs that no one has tried to replicate because it's too hard, not enough devs up for the challenge. Easy examples.

But the players made the story in EQ, too. And in DAoC and AC. Using an EQ example, when you decided to haul yourself out to Befallen and see if you could kill Llrod, it was your idea to do that and you made the story. When you fell down the well and died and had to beg your guild for help to get your corpse back (and pretty much everyone did this at least once), it was still your story. Everyone involved was making their choice in what they wanted to do. When you heard that you were going to go kill the giants in Kael rather than the dragons in ToV because you wanted to be liked by the dragons instead, you were making the story.

But this "directed gameplay", you're not making the story anymore. You're playing someone else's story. It's like the bad "railroad" DMs of the past. "No, you can't do that, you do this instead." The DM (typically) was so enamored with his story that he walks the players through it rather than give them the freedom to make their own.

 

-----signature-----

Yes, I didn't join WoW to play someone else's story. I sound like a broken record saying I want the open-world feel back.


However


it occurred to me, in a game that has so much diversity of playstyle, that promoted itself that way has now (apparently) devolved down to basically one path through the game which feels restrictive. If you solo, have always solo'd, the new changes (storyline cattle chute aside) are wonderful. It's laid out linear, you know what to do. Quests are bunched together for you without excessive travel. You go on your merry way. That part is great.


Trying to group up with guildmates has some irritating obstacles.


So it looks like:


Solo through directed questpaths (for the most part)

Join PuG for Dungeons

Endgame


And you can say it was that way through most of LK, but it wasn't. Until hitting parts of Ice Crown, I could come out with a character and group up with my guildmates easily. I could walk into a lowbie zone and help out with a slightly higher character. I could go back with a character that had done all the quests in any zone (those few IC ones aside) and team up with a guildmate who had not done them. Now I have one character that I've halted playing because I don't want to get out of sync with guildmate. I can't group up with another in Westfall until they go through the quests. Another guildmate wants to come out and join us as well but he is in another phase.


-Still trying to adjust

 

-----signature-----

double post that was supposed to be an edit.

 

-----signature-----

Bioware said, and we'll see, but that people would be able to group with you, from what they said there would not be restrictions. Blizzard, like with the vehicles and arena, they come up with something and aren't happy if they aren't ramming it down people's throats. Giggety. They've done this with phasing in my opinion.


I have mixed feelings on it, mostly though for a MMORPG like WoW I'm not a huge fan, also partly it's a bait and switch and a kind of stealth nerf. It's not intuitive what you need to do in a MMORPG (emphasis on massively) to actually group with other people. LOTRO has story lines and solo quests, those are mostly in the epic lines, and clearly marked. There aren't entire zones. If you questing in zone x, your friend can join you.


" Two sandbox mmorpgs that no one has tried to replicate because it's too hard, not enough devs up for the challenge. Easy examples."


Link? I mean this just sounds totally made up. Is it possible players get home from work or school and want things to do, not to try to figure out things to do? I think my guess is more plausible, and displayed as a guess and not just a made up pronouncement. While sandbox players, and I mean pure sandbox, are quite vocal, they are in the minority it seems. And doesn't appear to be close.


I'm not certain a sandbox game is harder. In some ways probably, in many ways it's obviously easier. A fair amount of dev time is devoted to quests, quest logs, quest npc's, quest dialogue, quest rewards, etc.

 

-----signature-----

TLDR: Now that I think about it, I had a lot of fun coming up with my own stories/events in UO. But I still enjoy WoW even if they don't offer the same level of creativity.

Now that you guys and gals mention it, I do remember coming up with stuff when I was playing UO back in the day. In UO, guards in the town could 1-shot players (if they were acting up in Felucca, the PvP zone), or monsters if they chased you into town. But once in a while, they would disable that, and monsters would also spawn in the towns. UO didn't have a chat system then, so if you wanted to stay in touch with someone in the game the best way was with ICQ, a messaging program (think Teamspeak but you type messages instead of talking).

I formed a minor group within my guild, and we all wore similar outfits and rode similar mounts, and we would go into the city in an attempt to "liberate" it. While we never really could (the mobs would continually respawn till the event was over), it was still kind of fun to do that, and I got a surprising number of guildies to do that.

Another time, I organized something with my GM. There were two major zones in UO, Felucca and Trammel. Felucca was free for all PvP (except in towns), and Trammel was the exact same lands, but it was PvE only, unless you were at war with another guild. You could also attack/kill your own guildmates though as well, which you can guess led to some people screwing with others by killing them then leaving the guild to avoid retribution beyond a bad rap.

There was a bug (or maybe feature?) where if you wore a certain outfit (or it might've been an orc helmet), a high level spell could then 1-shot you. On top of wearing the mask though, certain monsters became friendly to you as well. After one guild meeting, I went and killed the GM, then mocked the guild, and ran off to the dungeon. I had some other guildies helping out acting like mooks, while I stood in the back of the dungeon with two dragons pet as the "boss" (back then you could have up to 5 dragons I think, then they nerfed it to one at most). My buddies were ICQ'ing me that there were a lot of guildmates who were pissed off at me and they were storming the dungeon, killing the mobs and the other players acting as my minions. When they got to me though, I was a bit too tough and they ended up dying.

Shortly afterwards, the GM told everyone that this was all part of a game I had came up with, which he also liked because it sounded like fun. The other members were relieved, thinking that I had gone rogue and wanted to screw them over. But we planned similar games in the future, such as using ranged weapons in the maze area and playing a sorta Team fortress by wearing the same color suits and all.

Now, how it relates to WoW, one thing that was sort of similar was the opening of Ahn'Quiraj (spelling?), where everyone had to gather materials in order to prep for the attack when the doors opened up. I wish they had more stuff like that going on from time to time to change things up a little. You know, create a lesser demon and have him cause trouble in various regions (based on level so multiple peeps could take part), and then have players help contribute to defeating it other than simply going into an instance and beating up the boss for phat lewtz yo.

Maybe have people gather materials to help make a super siege weapon or lots of tanks and then have players do a phased area where they take part in attacking the big bad's fort/army. I would love to see a bunch of players on mounts taking off from an airship like the one's in Icecrown, in order to do an aerial assault on the demon's ships, while ground forces in tanks and on foot hold off the demon's army. And as players retake areas that the demons took, it changes back to normal.

Or does this idea make too much sense, and therefore shouldn't be done, lol?

now that i entered uldum i also am getting sick of these retarded "cutscenes". they are so horribly done. no sound, stupid comic book chat bubbles, and 90% of each scene is just them standing around like idiots while the camera twirls around them. at least some of the ones in the earlier zones had voiceovers. it reminds me of age of conan how the starter area had full voice overs and production value then all the later zones were just text.

OMG, I just did some quests in Badlands, and whoa, there is some really, really hilarious ones there. There's a giant scar in the land, and three NPC's (probably drunk) tell you how Deathwing did it, and how they each dealt with him. You get to control each NPC and what they did, and man, the quests are really funny

You get to quest with the Lost Vikings too

Again, I have a feeling most people won't get to see that stuff, but for the ones that do, it's nice to see them do some stuff like this.

Replicating UO has nothing to do with difficulty. If anything, it's easier to replicate UO than WoW, way less resources needed.
Why nobody replicated it is simply because the EQ clone model works better financially.

In your opinion, if the management of a company about to make a MMORPG is presented with two choices:
1) "we can make the game sandbox oriented, like UO"
2) "we can make the game level/class/quest based, like EQ"
"Be warned that model 2 will most likely produce at least 4 or 5 times more income than model 1, as it has in the past".
What choice will be made by the money people?
Obvious...

Anyway, this discussion is irrelevant when we talk about WoW, which is based on the EQ Clone model since day one. It would have been almost impossible to turn it into a more sandbox oriented game, both technically since the game is not meant for that, and also commercially, since it would have alienated a big part of the player base who play WoW to have more WoW, and not to have the game changed into something radically different. The choice of phasing is therefore great to be able to tell a story and make the player feel he changes the world in the very rigid EQ Clone model, allowing everybody to be "the hero".

And Blizzard thanks you for your monthly subscription and keep on going forward with its model that doesn't need any proof of working anymore since it's still the most successful MMORPG, making new record sales with its new expansion.

 

-----signature-----