Order of Eris

Crafting … seriously? You’re going to start with crafting?

Yes. Yes I am.

I feel that crafting was probably the first step off the path for many MMO style games that led to a confusing, unfocused game. In DAoC, I felt that crafting was just something to keep people occupied while they were not grinding levels or playing RvR. Basically, something to keep people in the game when they were not playing the game! And to those of you who love crafting in MMO’s, I’m going to recommend something you probably won’t want to hear. I mean this in the nicest way possible. Go find a crafting game or make stuff in real life. If your idea of fun is sitting in one spot and doing something that other people feel is a chore, you can go play EVE Online. It’s like the best crafting game I have ever played. EVER.

In my vision of an MMO game, the character I play is not a merchant. They are not a haberdasher, or a sword smith, or an alchemist, or a pet store owner. They are an adventurer, or a hero, or a villian. A real do-er in the world that needs things done. Aside from gathering skills, my game would have no crafting or tradeskills per-se. This lack of crafting solves one issue right away. You don’t need to feel obligated to grind up a profession to make gear, or to make items you feel you need. No more need to find a blacksmith to make belt buckles to grind your leatherworking up. No one will tell you to grind up your tailoring to get some armor that is the best in the game. It’s a liberating idea.

But, how am I going to get cool things? Like nice armor, potions, gizmos and whiz-bang inventions? Here is what I think can provide a realistic, customizable, system to get people these same things. Merchants. Imagine heading into town and going to the local armor smith and commissioning some armor. This merchant offers some discounts if you can provide some of the raw materials, but he can also take raw cash. You get to select from many different looks and options, but you can make the same armor that looks different. Potions and other items can be purchased from merchants, not unlike how you buy arrows in WoW today. It just makes sense that people would specialize like this. Hero’s go out and “hero” and the people who are artisans stay in cities and make quality products for money and materials. You could even have tiers of crafters who offer ranges of quality items. The best armor crafter in the world could be pricey, but manufacturer the most ornate and powerful armor in the game. I don’t know, maybe he lives in some out of the way place. It’s a free world.

In the end, I like this idea because it solves a few problems. It removes the idea of balancing tradeskill items with items you might get from killing bosses. People would not feel obligated to grind a tradeskill up just to get some high end gear easily. People can collect resources to offset costs of new armor, and they can get armor that suits them that looks the way they want. It also creates a world where every priest you meet isn’t a master artisan tailor. This design adds some depth to the world and makes NPCs seem less like vending machines and more like craftsmen.

I have played a few MMORPGs and, as such, have some crazy ideas. I feel like I should write some of them down. Maybe someone will appreciate how crazy these ideas really are. I plan to post them on the blog in a series that will go into each one at a summary level.

A few of these ideas are really centered around the idea of a game being enjoyable to play, without being a huge smattering of little parts that all suck. Purity is something I have posted on in the past, and I like the idea of a game being direct and the players not being able to argue over the purpose of playing. Can you honestly imagine four people playing Monopoly, each with a different idea of what “winning” is? I can’t.

Commence the crazy.

I complain a lot on this blog, but I am also seriously thankful. And since this is where I spout my gibberish about the MMO gaming world, I’ll post my thanks about the same topic.

My copy of the new World of Warcraft expansion arrived in my mailbox on Monday. So, I popped it in and took it for a spin. There’s some good and some bad with WoW these days.

One bright beacon of light is that all of the content in the new expansion has already been conquered by the most elite of all guilds in the world. Before my copy was even in my hands. I like this because it does tell me that Blizzard seems to be getting wise about their past “make-it-so-hard-no-one-can-beat-it-quickly” mentality of balancing their content. Raiding content after you hit the maximum level shouldn’t be a struggle for the average player and guild. What good is spending half your companies resources on parts of the game only a minority of players will ever encounter or see? Better to cater to the majority of players and get more people rolling through the content and having fun. I am hopeful that this will slowly leave the more “hard core” crowd looking for bigger and better challenges in other games.

I also like the look and feel of the new areas. The Death Knight starting area is nice and different. And the Northrend areas I saw as Alliance are awesome looking. As usual, the artists employed by Blizzard are amazingly good at what they do. And the new areas are able to convey a feeling and mood as well as a sense of place. The quests clearly pay homage to the fact that you are not a schlub and you are a hero who can make a difference. Despite my knowing how ironic it is, it’s still a nice touch when you are basically soloing.

My characters are a mess. The mechanics seem out of whack. I have no idea what’s important for my classes anymore. And, I’m a little upset that the game seems to radically change every expansion. I’m not sure it’s getting better each time, either. In typical Blizzard fashion, I have no in-game help to let me know what stats are important to my character or what gear is better or worse than other gear. I’m level seventy and I have been playing the game for four years and I am back to feeling like my seasoned character has no clue how to be good at the game. It’s frustrating and bad design.

I guess two out of three isn’t bad for a game that’s been around the block a while.

Fallout 3 has sucked up a lot of my time recently. WoW, WAR, meh. I have to say that I ordered the new WoW expansion, and I might play it. But, Fallout 3 was a nice break from the MMO re-tread world. I didn’t have to worry about people telling me what to do. Or not having enough people coordinated to get anything done.

Liberating.

It takes inspiration to be the person organizing stuff. Getting a bowling team together, planning raids, hosting a LAN party, or coaching a softball team. All these kinds of things take inspiration, vision, work, and participants.

For me, I look back at my time as a guild leader as the most soul crushing experience of my life. All my vision and inspiration were totally stomped into the ground by wave after wave of guild members. A large part of that entire experience for me was not that my vision was flawed (which it might have been). But that when I proposed it to people, no one really cared. I was greeted with an initial wave of indifference that slowly turned into a steady trickle of ambivalence and malaise.

I had the vision. I had the inspiration. I put in the work. But, I am not sure I had the willing participants. At least, not enough of them. I think I had several willing helpers who embraced the vision, but none had their own vision or inspiration. Hindsight is 20/20, and I probably should not have moved forward with an existing guild, with an existing player base. A new guild would have been a better idea. It would have avoided the constant turmoil of people trying to stay with their friends, but who didn’t give a damn about the “idea” of the guild.

Live and learn.

Avoid the trappings of an in-game structure all together.

In this concept, you avoid the fixed barriers of a guild. Friendships are no longer defined or destroyed by inclusion in an arbitrary game mechanic. A “lite” version of this idea is the alliance. While people might have to join a guild to join the alliance, they can join (or create) a guild they like, with people they like, and join an alliance that provides an over-arching unity to meet a larger goal. Yet, this doesn’t solve all the issues with management. You have to join a guild, and that guild will need to be managed and controlled. Most alliances still have rules for participation and to manage shared resources, such as the alliance chat channel.

The Leftover’s concept is a good implementation of the “No-Guild Guild” idea. There is no “guild”, only charters. Charters are for accomplishing goals. The charters function as limited guilds. They have defined goals, there is no in-game manifestation of being a member, and no expectation of being included permanently. As a matter of fact, the charters are obviously not going to last as long as the people will play the game. Charters are designed to tackle specific content in the game of WoW and when the person running the charter is done, the charter might just go away. No harm, no foul. The one thing this idea really delivers to the table is the broaching of expectations. No one joins the charter with the expectation of getting lots of guild services. And no one running the charter expects people to behave like they are members of a guild. And, if you don’t want to be in a guild at all, a charter is still viable for you to join or run.

Obviously, someone is still running the charter and doing the work of putting together a raid in WoW, but this is a lot less work than setting up web services, managing guild membership and interpersonal problems. In the end, a charter leader would most likely be doing this same exact work in a guild, and be called a raid leader. But now they have a wider pool of participants to choose from and people have a wider pool of raid leaders to follow. No one is limited to the pool of players in their guild alone. At first glance, you might think this is opening up this aspect of the game to more people might lower quality of participants. But, since the charter leader and the participant are free to do as they please, they can exclude problem players from who they have to interact with. Charter leaders can opt to not invite people they think are problems and participants can not join groups run by people they don’t like. They are not playing out of a pool of their guild, and thus forced to decide between their friends and their game play expectations.