Why is it that whenever I dive into a new MMORPG I feel like my intelligence is being insulted? Apparently this is just me because those same MMOs are the ones that become the highest rated, widely played, and most successful in the market. Don’t get me wrong, I am a victim to playing each of those MMOs, but my addiction only lasts for a short period of time. I usually don’t jump into an MMO at its launch. I wait a few months to see what people say about it, if it is a hit or miss, etc. Let me start off my analysis with Everquest II.

I tried out the EQ2 Trial of the Isle amidst a Star Wars Galaxies slump. The SWG content machine had come to a standstill, so I figured I’d go for something fresh. I completed the trial and I was hooked. The graphics were amazing, gameplay was easy, and the experience seemed new. I immediately went out and bought the game and began to play. A week later my character was at level 13, but the game itself was uninstalled and the game box put on my shelf to gather dust with the rest of my old games. I had gotten bored with it so fast that I still regret forking over $50 to the EB Games cashier, who kindly went out of his way to climb a ladder and pull down the last copy from the top shelf of the store. The game lacked content, and the lacking thereof was further amplified by the skill-less gameplay. It was nothing new…your standard MMO engine with press-and-watch gameplay, cooldown timers for specials, and an endless grind. It was a real pity because the graphics of EQ2 were so beautiful. Oh well, it was back to SWG to live out my misery. Mind you, this was all before the Combat Upgrade happened, so I had plenty of open options to further diversify my character and explore new avenues.

Then Guild Wars came knocking on my door. Another MMO full of promise that ended up on my shelf as quickly as EQ2. Like EQ2, it had beautiful graphics, but unlike EQ2, it had good content. However, Guild Wars had two flaws. The first was that it utilized the typical MMO gameplay engine. No thought was necessary on my part. Just press a button and let the machine handle the rest.

The second flaw was the biggest reason I shelved Guild Wars: I could not go back to pre-searing Ascalon. This effect was entirely psychological. The starting zone or tutorial of a game is the launching pad to the game itself. When the starting zone or tutorial of an MMO is small, the new player does not have the time or the content required to bond to his or her surroundings, or to be immersed in the game’s potential. The player is still exploring how the game works. How do I move my character? Can I adjust my camera angle? What’s the chat feature like? A starting zone or tutorial is made solely for those purposes: so the player can learn the game’s basics without worrying about anything else. No relationship is formed between the player and that area. Think of the SWG tutorial (pre-CU), or EQ2′s Isle, or Second Life’s noob zone.  Once the starting zone is made much larger and aspects of the full game are added to it, such as quests, large land area, community, economy, and dungeons, a bond begins to form between that zone and the player. The player forms an innate relationship with that zone, giving that zone a “homely” feel. It becomes sort of a safe house for the player, allowing them to feel comfortable in it, and when away from it, feel a sense of nostalgia. The player develops key points in the character’s career in that zone, such as completing his or her first rewarding quest, killing the first boss, exploring the entire map, and having a sense of “expertise” about that zone. In Guild Wars, that zone is shut off from the player once they leave it, forcing the player to relearn an entirely new zone with new enemies and environments. It gives the player a “starting over” feeling, which is more annoying than welcoming. If anything goes wrong, the player cannot turn back and go to where they started. They’re stuck in a new area and must relearn everything they thought they knew, such as positions of key NPCs, etc. Starting zones are a place where players can fall back to whenever in doubt of their situation. That was the big turn off of Guild Wars, which is why I never went out of post-searing Ascalon. I was lost, I felt that I did all that exploring and questing in pre-searing Ascalon for nothing. The best way to have a starting zone is like World of Warcraft, where the starting zone is integrated with the rest of the game and not cut off from it. That way, there is always a “turning back.” The player can always relate to that zone whenever necessary.

Speaking of World of Warcraft (and getting back on topic), I did the WoW 14 day trial in November 2005. It was just after the New Game Enhancements hit SWG, and my blood was already boiling with the whole execution of the NGE. I’ll admit, I didn’t get hooked onto WoW. I played until level 10, but it had that damn mainstream game engine. Press 1 to start attacking, go get a beer, come back to find your enemy dead, gain 40xp. Yay, mindless grinding. However, in January of 2006 I picked up the full version, primarily because most of my friends moved on to WoW. My friends kept telling me how great of a game it was, and how it revolutionized the MMO genre of gaming. The reviews of the game seemed to agree. I decided that what was missing from my trial version was my friends…a community to have fun playing the game with. I decided to give it another shot. I was told that a casual gamer, AKA me, could hit level 60 in about two months. It is September 2006 and I have my main, a Warlock, at level 25, my Druid alt on the same server at level 10, and a Rogue alt on another server at level 19. Then again, I stopped actively playing around mid-May. The fact that my friends were playing did help me stay in the game and actually want to play. In the end, however, common sense was the victor. Some noob pressing random buttons could still beat me in a duel because he had better equipment, and combat kept me busy figuring out efficient button mashing patterns on my keyboard. There was no skill.

Now, many of you already hate me for saying that. You will argue that skill is needed to learn the specials, see which ones do what, find out when to use them, how to use them, what to learn, what not to, etc. Furthermore, you can argue that raids require a ton of skill and planning, because tactics and coordination are needed, as well as teamwork and leadership. But good leadership and teamwork, or even the ability to know which specials to do in what sequence and at what time is not really using skill to its full potential. Take a fifty year old gamer and an eighteen year old gamer and put them WoW. Have them be the same race and same class, and learn the same professions. Have them also learn the same talent build. Stop saying that this is a controlled situation, because it is well known that there is a huge amount of night elf rogues with the Seal Fate Dagger build or the Combat Dagger build. Back to our little experiment, I guarantee you that both the fifty year old and the eighteen year old will have a very similar, if not identical playing style. The environment in which they play in is controlled. The eighteen year old is able to execute a combo the same exact way the fifty year old will. Now, take an eighteen year old marketing major and a fifty year old marketing executive and have them work out a marketing dilemma individually. Obviously, the fifty year old will be able to accomplish this more effectively and efficiently because he or she is more skilled in the marketing profession.

The conclusion is that although WoW allows character diversity, there is no skill involved because it is a controlled environment. It limits the player from actually using his or her own personal skills. The nerd and the jock both have the same level of skill when playing any mainstream MMO these days. Personalization is only in the appearance and s
killset you choose, not in the gameplay itself.

At this point you’re thinking to yourself, “OK smartass, how about listing your solutions or ideas towards a working skill system?” I thought you’d never ask. Anyone can point out a problem, but just pointing it out is half the job. First off, here are some of my major beliefs in making a good and successful MMORPG:

1. In order for an MMO to be skill based, the environment in which the player is in must be as uncontrolled as possible. The player should have control over the environment, not the environment over the player. I don’t mean that the player must have the ability to do anything in any way, shape, or form. I’m merely suggesting that the player should be able to choose his or her own destiny. The other player halfway across the country should not be required to take a similar path as me in order to get to the endgame.
2. Get rid of the level system. The level system is linear, meaning I have to kill lower level creatures before I can go after higher level creatures. Instead, the level system should be revamped to show difficulty by the abilities the creature has at its disposal. This just leaves a simple system of no challenge, very easy, easy, medium, difficult, very difficult, impossible. I shouldn’t have to look at my level and determine if whether or not I should attack a creature. How many times do you get beaten up by a rabbit? I’m smart enough to know that if a rabbit attacks me, I can use my foot, or a gun, or a rock, or something to defeat it fairly easily. The level system prevents any such innovation. It has a simple rule: if you’re level 1, and the rabbit is level 10, you, my friend, just got killed by a furry little rabbit. Tie in the level system to AI. The higher intelligence a creature has, the more difficult it will be to kill. I know how to multiply numbers. So does Stephen Hawking. If I have a multiplication contest with Stephen Hawking, you can bet that he’ll make a fool out of me. We both know the same skill, but Stephen Hawking can utilize it better and faster than I can. Two people can know the same skill, but can use it in entirely different ways. In a level system, this cannot happen. If you know a skill called “super-punch mastery” that does 100-110 damage per use, you can sure as hell bet that the guy next to me with that same skill is dishing out the same damage, the same exact way as me, each time he uses it.
3. In order to have an effective skill system, you need to have totally customizable characters. When I say totally customizable, I mean that a character is not limited to a certain class or profession, although appearance customization would be neat (see #6). Star Wars Galaxies had the right idea when it was released. If you wanted to be a Doctor, you weren’t limited to just that. You were allowed to dabble in professions to customize yourself to however you wanted. It made you unique from anyone else. The possibilities were almost infinite in how you could customize your character’s skillset. What made it even better was that you had the freedom to change your skillset at any time you wished. There was nothing limiting you from being a Master Rifleman, but having the healing tree in Doctor and some Brawler skills for those close encounters.
4. There must be a player economy that is independent of the game itself. Again, SWG had the right idea with its original player economy. The fact that it was entirely player run and dependent made it one of the most amazing phenomena the business world had seen. There were no set rules for resource scarcity, resource shifts, demand, supply, marketing, competition, etc. Those things developed naturally into a free-flowing market economy. When merchants are introduced that buy items at set prices, the economy becomes regulated. Price floors and price ceilings are set for items. This in turn results in an inefficient allocation to players, an inefficient allocation of sales, and wasted resources. Price control most certainly leads to overpricing of products. Even when the product is not in demand, it’s value will never go below a certain point, allowing almost no room for an healthy economic cycle. This is the dominant model in WoW, but it exists in EQ2 and now SWG is unfortunately taking that course. Anarchy Online also avoids a completely player run economy by setting price controls for products on vendors.
5. The game should be LARGE. Almost every player hates being in a small map that is bound by invisible walls. If you decide to jump off a bridge in real life, there is no invisible wall preventing you from going off the edge. The same should apply to MMOs. WoW has done a good job of streamlining everything together. It will take a player a good few hours to run from the top of a continent to the bottom. Even faster transportation requires no loading or changing of instances. I believe that each shard of WoW can support somewhere between 70,000 and 80,000 players (don’t quote me on this). If a player decides to swim to the end of the world, there is no invisible wall. You simply drown by going way too deep, which seems logical. An MMO is supposed to be an escape from reality for a person. It is an alternate world where they can live a different life using their imagination while interacting with others. Having a game that is too instanced *coughcoughguildwarscoughcough* defies the realism. A person should be able to run into other people while running across the country…not be the only player character around because anywhere outside a city is a contained instance. Speaking of realism, if a game is boasting it’s 3D graphics, then make sure the gameplay is three dimensional as well. There should be no excuse as to why someone can’t jump over a one foot tall rock in a graphically stunning 3D MMO. Half the MMOs out there do not support jumping, and actually force you to walk around things that in real life you simply can just step over.
6. Sony Online Entertainment’s graphics engine is amazing. Not because it produces shiny graphics, but because it lets you fully customize your character’s appearance. Facial features, body mass and size, and body details are all customizable to any degree the player wants. This allows individualism in a game. With the exception of EVE, SWG, and EQ2, most major MMOs today strip the player of character individuality. They take you to the character creation screen and make you chose from a small selection of pre-loaded faces, hairstyles, body sizes, and accessories. This is why in many MMOs everyone looks the same. That is because they are the same. There are times when I play an MMO and see an exact replica of my character. Individuality is key to making the game experience more personal with the consumer. My character in Star Wars Galaxies was modeled to look as much like me as possible. I have a bond with my character. I love the character more than the game itself, because it is a pathway for me to play in a virtual universe unconstrained from the issues of everyday life. Just using this bond alone will sustain a good chunk of a game’s player base.
7. Speaking of SOE’s graphics engine, throw in the SWG crafting engine and you have one of the best crafting systems ever created for a game. Not only were you allowed to craft unique items, it was directly tied into the player economy as well as character customization. The implementation of the Chu-Gon Dar cube took crafting to the next level. It removed the need for pre-set schematics and allowed the player to just plug in resources and see which of the thousands of possibilities came out. Combining the cube with the original crafting system can lead to a very diverse market (more diverse than the original crafting system), with plenty of room for innovation on the player’s part. Unlike many other big MMOs out there who although have diverse crafting systems, all products come out identical regardless of who makes them.

So enough with the points, here’s an how a skill system can work. I’m not reinventing the wheel here, I amjust using things that already exist in the gaming industry and combining them in a way that will make a successful skill system. First off, take the skill tree system of the original Star Wars Galaxies. You have total customization of your character’s skills and are not limited to one path or profession. There are infinite possibilities to what your final template will be. Next off, eliminate grinding. I don’t care what you say, grinding is by no means a way of gaining experience. Killing the same thing over and over again does not make you experienced. I think a person can get the hang of shooting a thief after the tenth time, not the ten-thousandth. Instead, the only use for grinding will be to fine tune your personal skills, which I’ll expand on later. Experience points will be part of a rewards system that helps you unlock various levels of advancement in a skill. This system, in other words is part of training. Here’s how it will work.

Remember in the N64 game, Perfect Dark, where there was the training shooting range in the basement of your HQ? You went there, chose a weapon to train with, and you were given the test. If completed within certain parameters that required your personal real life skills (aiming, speed, etc), you were able to unlock a higher level of training. You did another test, and the same occurred. There were three levels of mastery. This was skill. The actual player was the one who got trained, not the character. You couldn’t simply pay $1000 to the training room dude to give you the best skill available in a certain weapon. You had to pass trials in order to achieve that skill. Of course, in my system, it would require a trial like this in order to gain another skill box. The skill box training would be determined by what test you took. Your skill trainer of course would take money (higher skills will require more money), however, you had to pass the trials yourself in order to learn and advance. Another good example would be in the game Star Wars: Jedi Academy. In order to graduate, you had to pass a series of trials teaching you how to use each force power (and ultimately how to use all force powers together). Puzzle solving techniques, personal speed, etc were used to pass those tests. Therefore, training is all mission/quest based. If I want to max out my rifle abilities, I better prove I am worthy of that. Training would be instanced unless otherwise noted (some elite skills, like mastery of a profession, might require you to complete your task in a live environment). This is not limited to a First Person Shooter system. I just used those as examples. This can be adapted in many different ways to accommodate a toolbar system as well. All it requires is a bit of thought in order to avoid the use of FAQs or walkthroughs. Once a person can go to a site like Allakhazam.com and be given a step-by-step rundown of how to complete an elite training mission, the MMO has been made dumb again.

Upon successfully training in one tier of a skill, you are given special experience points, or tokens, to advance to the next level of training in that skill. These points can not be used towards training in another skill (learning to fire a pistol does not mean you can perform brain surgery, nor does it mean that you can successfully fire off a rocket launcher). When you reach the top tier of training in a skill, you are awarded experience points towards the mastery box of the profession that skill is in (which obviously means, if you train in all skills of that profession at all difficulties, you can master the profession). Grinding also comes into play here. You simple can not train skill after skill. You can try if you want, but odds are you won’t be able to succeed. Grinding is where the player can go out and test him or herself. The amount of grinding done is determined by how comfortable the player feels in taking the next test. It is like studying for an exam. Each person studies at their own pace, and they study as much as they need to in order to feel comfortable with the exam material. Therefore, grinding is not forced. Grinding is simply there to help you fine tune your skills before training. Practice makes perfect, but practicing to press the same button over and over again for two million experience points at 1000 experience points per kill is accomplishing nothing. All it does is annoy the player and add frustration to his or her gameplay experience. I won’t go into much detail of the entire system, because that would take many pages. This is just a preview of what can be made possible using tools already available to our disposal.

I also want to take a moment to talk about quests. Again, quests are another thing that keep dumbing down MMOs. Killing five animals, delivering a package, or going to a website to read a step-by-step walkthrough of the mission does not require skill. The gamer is not lazy when it comes to games. Kiddies are lazy. Having arrows, and waypoints, and markers showing where your mission objective is on a map does not make the game challenging. It just makes your average thirteen year old happy that he or she doesn’t have to think. Challenging games also don’t mean placing semi-impossible objectives for missions (for example, going against a boss that has one million health points and seven different weapons at it’s disposal). Make me think, dammit! Assign difficulties to quests like, “IQ of 120 or above needed” or “your dog can figure this out.” That way a game isn’t made too hard or too easy, the player can chose the difficulty level her or she is comfortable with. Here’s an example of a good quest. You’re mission is to rescue a kidnapped individual. Your only clues are the last known location of the kidnapped individual and a possible suspect. The only mission coordinates given are those of the last known location. You must actually search for clues in the surroundings, or even question NPCs. By piecing together evidence, you can finally get to where you need to go. Are there guards outside? You can either chose to attack them which will enable an alarm, or use objects at your disposal to create a distraction, or find a way to sneak in through a different entrance. And these missions are never static. Each one has different coordinates with different clues, etc. The player’s problem solving skills are put to use here, and thinking is required. This was only one example. It can be expanded upon in so many ways.

These are just some ideas and suggestions in which the MMO industry can turn the ship away from the iceberg and make way towards a new generation of MMORPGs: the smart MMO. Unfortunately, more and more dumb MMOs are coming out each year, where game developers either clone WoW or retain the notion that the gamer is an idiot and needs his or her hand held throughout the game. It is not too late though. The majority of American consumers have access to the internet, meaning there is an infinite amount of information and knowledge at their fingertips. Although only 20% of Americans have a college education, the level of critical thinking has increased tremendously since the rise of the internet. People are smarter. People are driven by challenges. This needs to be pursued. The MMO industry, and gaming industry in general must up its standards for what a quality game is. It is no longer about pretty graphics and easy gameplay. Intelligence, skill, and challenge is a growing rallying cry amongst gamers. As Raph Koster said at the Austin Gaming Conference, “Evolve or die.”