Say what you will about achievement points on the Xbox 360. They may cheapen the experience, or reduce elements of skill down to raw numbers, but anyone who has ever played a 360 knows how addictive the little "Achievement unlocked!" message is. So what happens when you toss that into an MMO? Titles.
It seems that a recent trend in MMOs is "titles". When they first debuted in the mainstream with City of Heroes, they didn't do much. All they did was add bragging rights for the person who has them, and a displayable title above the person's head. They were worthless (Well, mostly worthless). And most of the titles in CoX are still worthless.
"Oh, I killed 200 Circle of Thorn members. I've got that sweet new title."
Some MMOs are actually starting to change things up now, though, including the pioneers of the "Titles" system. Getting the exploration titles in City of Heroes/Villains will enable your Supergroup to teleport to that map from your Supergroup base. Getting certain titles in Guild Wars will allow you to increase your holding cap on faction. Getting all titles in an area in Tabula Rasa gets you a huge experience bonus (noticing a trend here? NCsoft developers seem to love the use of titles).
This focus both hurts and helps MMOs. From a business standpoint, it's an excellent model. It extends game life and adds addiction to an already very addictive game. More people, playing more often and for longer, equals more money for the company in subscription fees, and this trend of increased revenue will just keep on rising. "Just 20 more enemies and I'll have this new title," is the mentality here. The problem is, a lot of people focus on getting the titles and not on experiencing the game. When all you are doing is grinding gang members for your worthless new title instead of doing quests for XP and experiencing the story through those quests, you are missing out on the meat of the game.
It's not that I hate titles. Far from it. Titles add longevity to an MMO long after you have exhausted the story and quest content. I'm quite addicted to titles myself, as I am quite the completionist. At the moment, though, the implementation of titles is mostly bad. Instead of giving titles for doing things you were already going to do, (Completing 100 newspaper missions in City of Villains, for example, or completing a quest chain in Tabula Rasa), you get titles for killing X amounts of mob Y and Z.
This also isn't to say that an MMO needs titles to stay addictive and fresh. World of Warcraft has a huge installed player base and there a plenty of successful games that have managed to provide fresh, addictive gameplay without titles (Here's looking at you, Everquest.)
The better way of doing titles, in my opinion, is to always give players titles for just playing the game, and have them affect gameplay more. DarkSpace did this really well, giving you badges which both affect gameplay and give you the gamer "bragging rights" that people seem to covet so much, without making you go grind useless junk. And Lord of the Rings Online is giving players bonuses in the form of Traits earned through Deeds.
So let titles rest, and do some good old questing. It'll be good for you.
Each week James Murff writes Under The Hood, a deeper look at MMO game mechanics and how they affect players, games, and the industry.
