I remember the thoughts that ran through my head when I first started reading pre-release info about Star Wars Galaxies, my first step into the MMORPG world. Before this I was an FPS ’stat’ whore and competition shooter. I only played first person shooters, mostly in the Delta Force series from Novalogic back in those days. When I discovered SWG and the promise of a persistent world my brain started spinning. They advertised that you could influence the galactic civil war and your actions would have lasting effects in the game world for all to see. That just never happened.
Persistent worlds are a wonderful idea in theory - providing gamers with a real sense of worth when their actions have lasting effects on the game world around them, even if small effects. However I haven’t seen a MMORPG yet that has a persistent, ever changing world. I know some folks will talk about things like structures you place in the game world being persistent, meaning they are always there and have changed the face of the game world. That’s not quite what I meant.
However there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon in two different games with both taking the same approach to making at least part of their respective game worlds persistent and changing. Eve Online with it’s Empyrean Age expansion and Warhammer Online both show promise in this field. With both games factions or realms, respectively, can change the owner ship of zones of the game from one side to the other. While this in and of itself isn’t mind blowing it is a step in the right direction. WAR does appear to take it a little further at least in changing the appearance of certain structures in a captured zone to show ownership. For example, if an enemy takes your keep they will have graphic changes on the keep like pillars of smoke and cannon balls stuck in walls to show the keep has been sacked.
The idea of shaping the game world is really solidly based in a story line of sorts. For example, in SWG you had the back story of the galactic civil war. While we knew far in advance that you could never change the outcome of the war as a whole we were hoping to see more influence on the stuff you didn’t see in the movies. My impression of what the developers were promising was a chance to influence smaller side stories or changing directions in the story line based on player input. For example, if a player or set number of players completes some pre-set conditions, perhaps a side story line could be opened up that wasn’t available before.
If a MMORPG developer really wanted to step away from the norm and invest some time and money into it a nifty idea would be to have an evolving story of quests available over time. Let’s say for the first quarter of the year that a ship crashed on Tatooine spawning a series of quests and possibly limited time instances. In the second quarter of the year perhaps the crashed ship is covered with sand with only a few parts protruding from the ground to remind players what had happened. A droid who survived the chaos hanging around the wreckage to lead players into the next stage of the story - sending them off to some distant place to continue the story line depending on the outcome of the last episode. This is only some wild example of events, but you get the idea.
The upside to this sort of story line is an ever changing game world, always something new to do or explore instead of just waiting around for the next big expansion or bug fix. The downside is these stories would have to be well crafted by the developers to allow players to jump in the middle of the on-going story if they missed the last episode. Not to mention this would take a large amount of work on the part of the developers to make something for the game that is only going to be there temporarily, especially if instanced dungeons are added to the mix.
These are just some of the crazy, hair brained ideas I have when sitting around the water cooler but imagine the value gamers would have in their characters if they could participate in shaping the world. Rewards for participating may be some badge to add to your character or some other useless junk but it will be valuable to that player because it’s unique. And unique is what gamers want for their characters.
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