Joiry

Look, its a big IP with big money behind it. Of course they aren't going to task risks. They take what a majority of the gamers want/are used to, add a few variants and a new feature or two, and voila. So, yeah, its gonna be low on innovation in any real sense (tho, technically right relative to the rest of the industry, since MMOs are pretty much in a rut).

So, I could care less, except for the BS PR that tries to foist it off as some great advance in MMOs. Its not. Can't they just accept that million+ players will buy it anyway, probably play for long enough to make a decent profit.

Kinda feel the same about GW2. Sure, they're innovating some features - but in reality its mostly refining and polishing gameplay you find in every other EQ-WoW-etc lineage of games. At least RIFT seemed to just go ahead an own up to it - its everything you expect, just revamped.

@(Unverified) (me)

I forgot to add in one of my points which tied parts of the post together - its a matter of what kind of story are you looking for. If you feel the story must be well polished and designed - ie the drama comes at the right moment, tensions are built up at the right pace, etc - the of course you have to go with something strongly driven from outside the players (writer, GM), and the more the players become actors reading a script.

On the other end, you can stories that are more "realistic" - twists and turns happen due to freeform player decisions, which rarely (or randomly) happen at a point where a good writer/storyteller would put them. And, to be brief, there's a whole range between those two points. Maybe there's a sweetspot between them, but I think that spot can vary a lot from player to player - which means no group of MMO devs are ever going to find a universal one. Tho, these days, games tend to settle far closer to the highly scripted.

Reading this article, Jef's, and your previous one, makes me think of my first MMO, Shadowbane. There was a background lore, and several RP guilds on the server, and basically no story (a attempts at GM run events, but they generally ended badly).

And yet we had all the elements of a good story - bad guys, rogues, alliances, doubtful allies, tensions, personal vendettas, etc. None of it, of course, paced and refined out like a "well told story." Some of it came from RPers, a lot from others just playing to crush! I'm not trying to make it sound ideal (SB had a lot of design and implementation issues), but the general environment plus the lore created a good dynamic to rp if you wished.

What might be really cool if you took a game like GW2, removed the cliche Destroy-the-World baddies, but turned the focus to making even more dynamic the, ahem, dynamic events (which are really only semi-dynamic, just complex branching scripted events). Thus, instead of everyone having to pretend around the fact everyone else did the same world saving storyline, its a world of ebb and flow.

I think throw in some sort of virtue system with the above (akin to maybe Ultima's virtues, but reworked a bit to cover more ground) - that not just a dialog option between the red or blue path of points, but your actions in the various events also effect - you can have an environment for deep RPers, lite-RPers (more like me), and even those who care less, but might be happy that their actions speak for them.

Hmmm, I hope that all made sense...

It doesn't really matter if player generated content ranges from crap to stellar, or how much of it falls where along the axis. If players want to express their creativity, or lack thereof, you'd hope there would be games to let them. And if that's not your cup of tea, well, then there's SWTOR for you.

And while I am being a bit snarky with that last comment, its just the case there are people who are pure consumers of pre-made content, and then others who have varying levels of desire to have more control over their characters/story/etc.

The idea that only "pros" should write stories is like saying no one other than NBA players should play basketball (or any pro sport, or music, etc). You don't have to be a star player to enjoy a local intramural game with friends or others. What matters is its yours, something you worked on, crafted to fit a set of expectations not generalized for the largest audience within the MMO world.

I'm not a heavy RPer. I usually do a basic set of personality traits and background, but nothing deep into their psychology. But its still my character - and shoehorning them into a set of pre-made decisions from an MMO writer always annoys me. Then again, others don't mind, and like having all these things laid out.

Probably the best set of predictions amongst the editors - practical and using history as a guide where possible.

I'm a big GW1 fan, but Anet has been pounding the "revolution" drum for GW2 too much and too hard. Anet certainly has the talent to make a revolutionary MMO, but GW2 is only evolutionary. In a sense, its just doing what WoW did when it first came out (let me repeat, in a sense). Its taking a bunch of standard MMO mechanics, revising/overhauling them, and presenting them in a new package. Dynamic Events are cool, but really just a more interesting packaging for kill X/collect Y style quests.

EQ Next as a sandbox? Its possible, and would be potentially awesome, but that's one prediction I'd label more wishful. I think the whole Archeage being a hybrid sandbox/themepark is spot on, tho I might say its not so much a hybrid as trying to do both separately in one game?

@(Unverified)

One more point - the GW2 books had to many obvious references to game mechanics, especially Edge of Destiny.

Long ago, when young, I enjoyed the original Dragonlance novels - but I fear to destroy my fond memories by rereading them. Otherwise I avoid franchised novels/settings.

I did read the two GW2 novels though. Decent writing, but bad plots and uninteresting characters (in fact, I dislike the 5 "iconics" more after reading EoD). I feel the style is written more to 12-16 year olds? Especially the dialog seems to be like a dub of the more shallow animes. Note, I don't think deep = lots of complex dialog, good artists can convey depth with less, but less isn't always more. ;)

The GW2 novels also don't really provide that much background lore. Its mostly already known if you half pay attention to the info releases from Anet (and generally, if you're buying the books, you're probably that kind of fan already). There's a few new details, but even those will probably (almost have to) be contained within the game itself.

Paid for random lottery chances are one of the more blatantly greedy things to hit MMOs. Scam? No - you know upfront its random, and you (should) know the House always wins.

SWG did this with its trading card game, adding in the chance for rare cards that gave you otherwise unobtainable items in game. In fact, most of the new item/house/vehicles added to SWG since the TCG have only been available through random chance of buying packs.

These things, packs, bags, etc - combine the worst aspects of random drop loot and micro-transaction abuse (I'm not entirely against micro, but its generally gone the way of overt greed).

@Ripper McGee
Snagged a key, signed up for an account, tried to use the verification url...and can't get it to work. Not clicking on it, not copying & pasting the raw url, not variantions on cutting off parts of the url... If they can't handle basic account creation I don't see the company doing anything else well.

@Lenn

Take human females for example. 20 faces, but every 4 all look basically the same, so its really 5 faces. 5 eye colors. A bunch of hair styles, but mostly very similar looking.

Not every game has to be Aion/CoH levels of customization, but you'd think in 2011 the options would be greater than in ~2004. I do think Aion may be over the top, but the basic ability to control a few major facial features, customize bodies, etc, should be the norm for a AAA MMO these days. Especially seeing as of the recent update, the game takes 36.6 gigs - I'd expect something more of such a massive undertaking of a game.