In my ever growing quest to see some changes take place in our fast-becoming stale MMORPG template I’m going to publish more and more ideas. Out of the box thinking is what it will take to spice up upcoming titles and give them something different from the World of Warcraft mold so many games seem to be following these days.
Today’s idea is Dynamic Content or in other words an ever changing face to the game world. A world where the combined actions of players have an effect on how the world around them exists down to environment itself. One thing gamers love to see is that what they do makes a difference, going into a cave and killing a hundred cave trolls to satisfy some quest only to go back into the cave and see all those same trolls respawned makes it seem kind of pointless, don’t you think?
With a dynamically shaped world, creature populations in areas can increase, decrease or completely give way to other creatures for a time based on player actions. If a certain creature type is over-killed there is a number of in-game effects you could use to show changes beyond just decreasing there numbers for awhile. Let’s use the cave troll example, if the trolls over over hunted, perhaps that could trigger an in-game event that the trolls counter-attack against a nearby player encampment or town. Or their numbers increase for a time as they beaf up their defense? You could even have named troll bosses spawn only when a certain number have been killed in a certain amount of time. The possibilities are endless.
To make it truly dynamic, you’d want creature populations to move around. If they are under hunted in an area, perhaps that could also trigger an event with them beginning to spawn in neighboring zones. Or trigger quests to trim the population of the critters.
Dynamic content doesn’t necessarily need to be centered around a PVE style of gameplay to work however, PVP is a great way to make changes to the world landscape. Some games, like Warhammer Online and Rohan Online, are already incorporating the PVP style dynamics with player captureable towns or fortresses. In WAR the actual look of the captured fortress changes to show ownership. That’s the right idea for sure but why stop there? Why not spawn friendly NPC patrols in the area of the fortress. The longer it is owned the more and higher level NPC’s spawn to help increase the realm’s foothold.
MMO designers have to think of examples like this both large and small to really make there game stand out from the over increasing crowd of MMORG’s. Better to be different and take risks than to keep following the same path so many other companies are taking and end up being just another face in the crowd.
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4 comments so far
Agree. I’ve been thinking up a system almost identical to what you described.
It seems clear to me that that is a logical ‘next step’ for MMOs to take.
That said, I’d like to add the notion of “EvE”. Much like PvE, but where the world can actually produce conflicts on it’s own, and is effected by players and NPCs alike. That would certainly breathe more life into the genre.
August 14th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Exactly. Content that is generated on the fly, or basically pre-programmed to happen at random intervals in semi-random locations. If you get enough of these random occurences designed, you’ll always have something fresh going on.
August 14th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
I say we sit down and write an MMORPG and then see if we can’t pitch it to a company and have them buy it for $100,000.
August 16th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Or get some really talented volunteers together and make it.
A game for gamers by gamers and free to gamers. Would be beautiful.
August 16th, 2008 at 1:41 am
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