Whilst so doing I remarked that WoW seemed to be being developed in a proper manner.
Proper development, in this context, being the antithesis of how most interactive software is developed.
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A game is designed and programmed for a given platform.
Each of it's components are effectively modular and substrate, as in the game engine consists of modules whilst it's assets are arrayed collectively. The graphics display processor for instance forms graphics according to the main line of the program, the models defined in files, with image textures wrapped around them, the whole forming a hierarchy [main < processor < model < texture] which is associated with, for example, sound files, to form a working entity within a gameworld.
The modification and upgrade of any given module of the program and it's corresponding assets is relatively straight forward if you've designed the game engine correctly. You simply adjust that component you wish to improve; to improve the graphics display processor, remove the old one, insert a new one and include in the assets higher resolution models and textures. Easy.
A PC format massive multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG, could be released, for example, ten years ago, and then over those ten years the components - systemic, graphical, audio, etc. - could be upgraded to take advantage of the rapid upgrade of publicly available and popular home PC gaming technology or innovations in games design.
The following could be done irrespective of advances in technology beyond perhaps storage space, although that's hardly an issue these days with multiple terabyte hard drives being commonplace.
- Adjustments to gameplay.
- Additional content.
- Or expansion content.
Additional content includes refining or adding more of what is already in the game to maintain or elongate the currently active subscription base.
And expansion content could add in alternative [such as PvP arenas] or additional [adding in a card game where no card game existed before] forms of gameplay.
This sort of progressive development would mean that a game could be released and then continually developed indefinitely by a single studio, adjusted and upgraded on an on-going basis to maintain a profitable playerbase.
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I remarked that WoW seemed to be being developed in a proper manner whilst downloading it's current client.
And then I actually played it.
The graphics and animations are the same as they were a good five years ago. As is the gameplay.
They haven't actually upgraded anything about it in five different major expansions.
Oh, they've adjusted the gameplay. I don't think you buy new abilities anymore for example, and the talent tree is now one ability with three variants where you pick one it looks like, and there's glyphs and other stuff, but you're still locked into picking a race, a class, and grinding your way to max level on quests and enemies.
This character class business was developed for Dungeons and Dragons more than 35 years ago, and although things have been added to it, it's core is designed for table top roleplaying and not computer games. It's absolutely ridiculous to still be using it, especially in the face of the fact that people will flock to a game which gives them customization and freedom to do what they want rather than what they're told.They've added a lot of additional content, but as I stated above, this is just more of what was already there.
Likewise with expansion content. They've added dungeons, they've added arenas, they've even added a kind of Pokemon pet battle system, which is all very nice, but still got 90 odd levels of grinding to do per character.
Point is that World of Warcraft has seen a lot of changes, a lot of what could be seen in a fair light as 'improvements', but the fact is that it's core gameplay, the World of Warcraft experience is OLD.
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There have been a lot of other MMORPGs which have copied a lot of the World of Warcraft formula, [and justifiably so given it's popularity] WoW itself being based even older MMORPG's such as Everquest which predated it by a good five years.
My issue with the current crop of AAA [top of the games industry] MMORPGs is that they're all pretty much alt-WoW.
WildStar for example. I got into the beta of that and summed it up as WoW 2 in space.
The race list: you've got the good free humans and the bad imperial humans, the dwarf/orcs and the machine/trolls, the gnomes and the beastmen, the undead and the cuter version of goblins.
Different cords, same tune.
The game is an improvement, sure, it looks better than WoW and plays better too, but that's just it, it's still WoW, it's just an update. It's old archaic stuff with a new lick of paint. See past the gloss and you find the rust.
And that's my problem.
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Everquest Next and Landmark, Sony's current central gaming enterprise, has been said to be the revolution of the MMORPG.
The best way to describe Landmark, as no one as yet has access to EQN, is as spherical Minecraft.
Voxel based engines like Minecraft and Landmark are either cubic [Minecraft] or spherical [Landmark] and is the different between a world made out of sharp edges and lines and smooth curves.One of the issues with Minecraft, which Notch never addressed, was that the best way to manage environmental editing was by using the topdown perspective for a birds-eye view of the landscape.
He also never programmed in proper gameplay or objectivity or instruction or any sort of templatism.
Most people who played Minecraft did so for five minuets before getting bored because they didn't know what to do next, and building anything is a painful process of putting every single block into position, like drawing in MS Paint.
Landmark is precisely the same. You spend ages running around collecting building materials, and then not knowing what the hell to do with them because there is no objectivity. And most people aren't 3D artists, and you can't edit the landscape beyond the confines of your plot anyway so your building often looks drastically out of place.
EQN may include objectivity as it's an MMORPG, but I doubt they'll tie the two systems together efficiently, or ever even address the perspective and information management flaws, even if they have addressed the efficency of the block placement with fill, copy and paste tools.
That's the point though; if Minecraft can be called Voxel MS Paint, then Landmark can be called Voxel 3D Studio Max. Both of which are tools designed for artists [even if Paint is for children in that respect] and most gamers aren't artists.
I'm not saying settlement builders and landscapers can't be games. SimCity for example provides a degree of both, as does The Settlers and Civilizations.
Dark Chronicles for the PS2 [if you can believe it] however is the only micro-editing gameplay system [the others I just mentioned being macro] that allows for small scale customization in an efficient and user friendly fashion.
An expansion of that system could permit accessible map customization to the average player who mostly just wants to hack things to pieces, not spend hours precisely detailing his porch lamp.
The hamfisted way Sony's crew is managing the evolution of Minecraft is stupid in the extreme. I wouldn't be bothered except the obvious solutions to the issues inherent in their system are so blinding obvious that a chimp could see them. How can smart people be so dumb is what I keep asking myself...
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Anyway, an actual new MMORPG, an innovative improved upgraded game, in my view, should be a hybrid of four, to a give an example, other games: League of Legends, Minecraft/Landmark, WoW, and Civilizations [with maybe a lil of Dark Chronicles user friendliness].
League of Legends is masterful in it's presentation and gameplay. The fluidity, the low-poly high-quality graphics, the stylization, and characterization, all marvellous. If it wasn't for Riot Games' corporate attitude, blinding arrogance, lack of ambition, empty words and general asshattery [whoever wrote that statement on ELO Hell being a myth is going to get my foot up their ass] they'd be the best there is.
Minecraft/Landmark and voxel editing is great in functionality, but there's a massive chasm between that and the user that no developer has yet addressed, probably because developers don't mind using developer tools and for some reason they never consider user friendliness. I couldn't begin to tell you why this is, but in my experience (HA, maybe I can then) it's because people think of A, maybe B if they try, but never get to C, and as for D...well...
World of Warcraft [or WildStar as it might be] is again like League of Legends. Well made, well written, well organized, very entertaining, but stale, archaic and old. That kind of gameplay - third person RPG which is accessible and well crafted - but mixed with a hell've a lot more in terms of free-form character development and customization.
And Civilizations is my go to example of how to build an information management 4X strategy title. You start off with a settle or two and by the end of a match that can last a couple of days of real time you own the planet. Obviously in an ongoing MMORPG you would have to own a space of your own and interact with others who you couldn't directly conquer perhaps, but that kind of factional management scope anyway.
The efficiency and environmental perception of LoL, the customization of Landmark expanded to include the micro-editing of the character, with the presentation and writing of WoW/WildStar, hybridized with the civilization and factional customization of Civilizations.
With progressive updates to the entire game system you could perpetuate the game for decades. You own realm, you colonize it, make it your own, work in a cooperative online space in shared settlements, and then expand out into the wyldlands where you fight for territory.
You don't have classes and levels, you have a character you build into whatever you want and respec if you get bored.
You can adventure and go delving into dungeons, you can play cards, you can fight using monsters, you can race vehicles you built, you can explore unknown maps which aren't mapped and that've never been visited by another play but have points of interest in them.
You can actually live the fucking virtual world instead of just running through the motions and grinding your character in the usual online computer game.
That's what an MMORPG should be. A true virtual world.
And that is something no studio or developer is ever going to make. It exists only in my head.
