Free for All

Back in April of 2011, I asked myself whether I would play RIFT if it were a free game. I know that I was impressed with its build quality but not so much with its lack of spirit. It seemed like a hollow game, one that used gimmicks to take the place of true adventure. At the same time, I didn't want to downplay how well it was made. I still agree with this sentiment; the game is great and has only improved over time, but I still wish it had a little something more.

Did the recent switch to free-to-play change how I felt about the game? Why would a payment model affect how I felt while playing the game? After all, I champion the idea that a payment model does not define a game, but I still have to recognize how a payment model affects people.

Including me.

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I couldn't just sit back and let Justin Olivetti have all the fun, could I? When he published The Perfect Ten: My gaming pet peeves, I swept my fist to the sky and screamed "Sypsterrrr!" Literally a week earlier I had jotted down an idea for a similar column. I mean jotted down because I keep yellow pads around the house for late-night ideas or dog-walk eurekas.

Of course his will probably end up the superior article as he is the better writer (and has a good bit of facial hair), but I'm going to present mine anyway. In fact I'll do one better by listing 11 of my MMO pet peeves because, well, I jotted down 11.

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My birthday is this week, so I thought it was time to grab a PlayStation 3 bundle, something I have been wanting for a while. Not only have the prices dropped for the consoles, but with the next generation coming out soon, I knew that many of the games that I wanted to get for it would be even cheaper. On top of that, the PS3 is the best console for MMOs. It currently hosts several, one of them being PlayStation Home.

My curiosity for Home has been fired up since I heard about it, but I've never before looked into it and have rarely heard anything more from it other than the occasional news story. Most of the time when I ask a PlayStation user about the virtual world, he'll just sort of shrug. It was about time I saw it for myself!

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MUD May has been a very enjoyable experience, but the main thing I learned is that a month is not long enough to cover all of MUDdom. Not by a long shot. The fact is that MUDs have a much longer history than graphical, 3-D MMOs, and here we are on an entire site dedicated mainly to those! We owe a lot to MUDs, but I always try to point out to current or former players that we should not refer to these games only in the past-tense. They are still alive, filled with players and ongoing. That means they are just as viable and worthy of mention as World of Warcraft. How many of our favorite 3-D MMOs will be around for two or more decades?

These wonderful games do need to improve in many areas, though. Some MUD developers are attempting to bring these text-based MMOs into the future, none better than Iron Realms Entertainment's Achaea. I sat down with Matt Mihaly, the CEO and Founder of Iron Realms since 1995, for an interview to talk about Achaea and the future of MUDs.

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The last time I explored ThresholdRPG, I had a blast. It was one of a batch of MUDs that I used to re-introduce myself to the ancient gaming genre, and I enjoyed its simplicity and friendly community. MUDs can seem to be very similar to each other, so in order to enjoy them, you must be able to pick out the finer details that separate them. In ThresholdRPG, I particularly enjoyed fishing, roleplay, customization, and a free-to-play model that was years ahead of its time when first released 17 years ago.

The game can be a bit odd, like any MUD. During MUD May I've discovered just how confusing many of these titles can be, but I have also grown to enjoy solving the "mystery" of each game's particular set of code-words that unlock actions. ThresholdRPG is like other MUDs and introduces players to basic commands, but once out in the world a player is on her own. The good news is that an out-of-character help chat is always available and sits right on top of the standard roleplay-enforced chat. That juxtaposition of both channels actually helps immerse me in the game, allowing me to see literally where and when I can use out-of-character speech.

I asked Michael Hartman, president and CEO of Frogdice, to talk about MUD development and branching out into other styles of gaming.

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MUD May has been a blast so far, but I won't lie to you and say that I hope to even make a dent in the decades-old history of many of these titles. I decided instead to use some examples from my favorite MUDs that I have come across over the last couple of years. It's admittedly been a challenge to think about what to cover. Do I cover the communities? The in-game mechanics? The publishers?

This week I decided to attempt to kill several birds with a handful of stones (and questions) and snagged Simutronics Producer Eric Latham for an video interview. Simutronics has been in the business for 26 years, and the publisher makes my favorite MUD, Gemstone IV. Latham has been with the company for 15 of those years! Technically I am using the interview and video as part of my Rise and Shiny series, but the questions and answers are more relevant to the general topic of MUDs. You might see it now as well as later, but it will hopefully provide some insight into the world of making MUDs.

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Welcome back to the second installment of MUD May! Almost any time I write an article, I try to keep new players in mind. It's fun to see the reaction from readers when I talk about MUDs or other "classic" MMO models and how these games can pull in fresh blood. Many people seem to forget that there are new players coming into MMO gaming all the time, and MUDs should be no different. Over the next few columns, I will be pulling examples from five games: Gemstone IV, Dragonrealms, Threshold RPG, BatMUD, and Achaea to explain how some basic MUD systems work.

With that in mind, I'd like to use this week's installment to explain -- in a very simple way -- how combat might feel in a MUD. One of the biggest hurdles for a new MUD player is often the massive amount of information that is built from decades of development. MUD players often sneer at the thought of simplifying the entry for new players. To be fair, this unwelcoming attitude is common in gaming in general. I feel differently, however, and want to explain some of the basics of these fantastic MMOs -- simply -- in a way that illustrates just how cool MUDs can be.

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For the month of May, I will be using this column to cover the world of MUDs aka multi-user-domains or dungeons. MUDs are text-based MMORPGs, and playing one is sort of like playing through a choose-your-own-adventure book with potentially thousands of other players. I'm not so arrogant to think that I could cover the decades of MUD development within the span of five articles, but I've had a go at it in the past and want to examine the topic more. Why?

There are many reasons, and to kick off this series, I'd like to talk about them. After today, my columns will concentrate on interviews with developers and players to explain how and why MUDs still work, and I hope that all of this will encourage many of you who have never tried a MUD to pick one out now. The recent buzz surrounding Twine-based games and interactive storytelling is perfect fuel for MUDs to come back into the spotlight. Unless, of course, many of the issues with the insulated community of MUDers sabotage the perfect timing.

Let's get started.

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Of all of the crazy characters from HBO's Game of Thrones, Brienne is easily my favorite. Why is she my favorite? It's not because she's just heroic or brave or any of the things that people often attribute to her; it's because she's a survivor. Much of that survival comes from her armor and the fact that she knows well enough to be able to protect herself! The actress Gwendoline Christie has talked about how uncomfortable the armor is to wear. I've heard the producers say that the metal skin is supposed to look sort of mismatched, and I love that. It only makes it stronger.

I often wish MMOs represented armor in better ways, especially for female characters. Some MMOs do a better job than others, and some MMOs do a decent job some of the time. Here are some of my picks for my favorite armor sets for female humans, orcs, goblins or... well, you get the point.

(Please don't post Game of Thrones spoilers in the comments section.)

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I took a look at Ecol Tactics Online not so long ago and mostly enjoyed what I found. When the game recently launched into open beta, I knew I had to check it out again. It's possible that the game I experienced before the open beta would be vastly different from the one I'd find later on, but everything felt familiar even though I was given access to higher-level play and cash shop.

I enjoyed the storyline and quest text much more this time around. Last time, gameplay appeared pretty standard, but now that I know what to expect with combat and performance, I can enjoy the story a bit more. But a player can ignore the story completely and still find the game enjoyable. That's an issue with many MMOs in general. A lot of the time the story has no bearing on a player's character. This time I slowed down and read up most of the quests I came across and discovered some pretty cute tales and toons.

The combat is still fun as well. Of course, turn-based combat is what this game is all about.

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My memory isn't what it used to be. My wife calls me "airheaded," but I like to pretend that the reason I often forget stuff (whether I had already washed my hair or not, for example) is because my brain is filled with amazing, distracting thoughts. One victim of that selective memory is the existence of live events. Feel free to correct me in the comments section -- in fact, I need you to -- but I seem to remember a time when live events were more common than not.

I'm not talking about scripted "random" events like those you'll find in RIFT, and I'm not referring to a quest-giver interaction. Nope, I'm talking about those special events when an employee logs in on a special account and makes things happen. In the game. In real time. Kids, ask your parents (or slightly older, funnier-looking favorite Massively columnist) for details. And no, I do not mean player-run events. Those are fantastic, but not the subject of this column.

I just attended a live event in Ryzom the other night, and it made me wonder: Why did real live events become so rare?

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There's nothing more important to me than the ability to freely explore MMOs. Heck, exploration is the reason I got into MMOs. I remember grabbing that box of Ultima Online (man, I wish I still had that box!) from a shelf at the local game store and looking in wonder at just how vast this virtual world seemed to be. I'm still the same way, although after years of doing this, I am a bit more cynical about games. I've heard so many promises that never came true, but I know that even the worst of titles offers the chance to explore a brand-new world.

There are a lot of exploration mechanics out there. Free Realms has an adventurer "job," The Secret World needs players to explore to solve mysteries, Guild Wars 2 offers experience based on discovering new areas, EverQuest II entices people to explore by offering collectible items embedded in the ground, and there are so many MMOs that allow players to gain experience just by approaching areas they haven't before.

But I have my favorites. These are games that just make me feel like an explorer.

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This will not be another column dedicated to deciding the true meaning of "MMORPG." We've covered that plenty on Massively, but it's safe to say that we allow a lot of different styles of multiplayer gaming to be covered on the site. Half the staff are old fuddy-duddies when it comes to these virtual worlds, but even the fogiest of the fogies sees the writing on the wall: The meaning is changing or at least becoming something different to different people. We can fight it like fighting the latest wave of musical styles, or we can search for the good in all of it and keep up a sense of humor.

I tend to cover whatever I feel like covering, as long as my bosses agree that the games I am writing about do not stray too far away from the MMO core. Some of my readers see my writing as supporting games that are not MMOs, promoting developers who want to ruin true MMOs by selling power, or elevating social games that are anything but MMOs. But I believe I have covered and will continue to cover "true" MMOs. I try to recognize the current state of MMOdom, and I want to capture it all at the same time. It has to be possible.

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Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. Keep that in mind before you tell that me the games that fill out the following list of "best-looking browser-based MMORPGs" are ugly as sin. Sure, some of them are an acquired taste, but I wanted to display just how much variety there is now in browser gaming. It's not the delivery system it once was; we have had fancier-looking Flash-based titles for a while, but now with engines like Unity or Silverlight and even HTML5 coding, we have games that look no different from their client-based counterparts.

There are still some ugly-as-sin games out there as well, but they have endearing qualities all the same. So keep that in mind; this is my top 10 list. If you want to suggest your own in the comments section, I would love to hear them!

Now, on to the list, in no particular order...

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I've written before about how to accept your fate as a permanent newbie, international game explorer, or constant PvP victim. It has always come down to accepting the fact that many MMOs require hours of dedication in order to become skilled. Sure, we can break down what "skilled" really means and examine what sort of timetable is realistic for most human beings, but let's just say that we're past that. We're well into the territory of accepting our fate as a digital traveler, someone who simply cannot say no to a new MMO.

This time I thought it would be better to list some lessons on how I learned to love the MMO explorer lifestyle. It worked for me! (Cheesy theme music starts in the background.)

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