
What a load of old rubbish: MMOs. They're doing it wrong. - chaostheory
http://blog.parallax-rising.net/2008/03/mmos-theyre-doing-it-wrong.html
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jcl
Several of his complaints seem to stem from a desire that each player should
have a brand-new experience, unique from any other player's. I find this
desire odd. If I am reading a novel, I do not pause to lament that others have
already read the same words, and if I am playing a board game, I am not
worried that someone may have used exactly the same strategy as mine.

I'm not so certain that procedurally generated content would be more
entertaining than custom content in an MMO. Procedural games like Angband (and
descendants like Oblivion) are entertaining, but they do not command the
audience that WoW does. Most MMO players are not troubled by their repetitive
experiences, so I wouldn't say the MMO's are "doing it wrong".

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bct
The appeal of being a person in a virtual world is in creating your own
stories. If your experiences are identical to everybody else's, if you can't
have a real effect on the world, then you're a passive observer rather than a
real participant.

Passive interactivity (it's an oxymoron but I think you get my meaning) can be
fun, of course. The problem is one of expectations; if you come into a static
game expecting a virtual world, you'll be disappointed. It doesn't help that
MMORPGs "look" like worlds, or that (to some extent) they're marketed as them.

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phaedrus
Suppose someone ( _cough_ we _cough_ ) were already working on everything this
guy's talking about - would you play it?

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alex_c
Depends. I have yet to play a (MMO)RPG with procedural content that is more
engaging than one with well-crafted static content. IMO it works for strategy
games, but not so much for RPGs. Yes, the procedural world is larger and has
more replayability, but once your brain becomes used to the algorithms used to
generate it, it becomes as repetitive as anything else.

I'd be happy to find a game that proves me wrong (not that I can afford the
time to let myself get sucked into an MMORPG anymore...)

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bct
There are two camps; people that want to make/play games, and people that want
to make/play worlds. For now at least, it's easier to make games than worlds.

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sabat
Agreed. This guy's problem is that most MMOs are MMORPGs -- games. He doesn't
want to play games. He wants to live in a virtual world. So: false choice.
He's complaining that an apple isn't an orange.

~~~
bct
I think it's more charitable to say that he's complaining that nobody's
selling oranges, but fair enough. :)

~~~
sabat
Perhaps, and I'm all for being charitable. :-) But he does spend a fair amount
of time complaining about the apples.

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0xdefec8
Ignoring gameplay issues, I think another interesting feature of procedural
game dev is the memory/CPU tradeoff.

For example the 97,280 byte FPS: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger>

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mkull
Ultima Online was on the right path.

Everquest set MMO's back 10 years in my opinion. :(

