Richard Garriot Argues Against Stagnant MMOG Design

The creator of Ultima Online and Tabula Rasa and well-known designer Richard Garriot spoke at the Develop Conference in Brighton, England on the subjects of stagnating MMOG design and the NCSoft deal with Sony. His commentary on Massive game design is fairly direct: "If you look at the vast majority of MMOs that has come out since Ultima Online and Everquest, you can look at the features and they are almost exactly the same. Even though the graphics have got better and the interface is much slicker, fundamentally the gameplay is unchanged. Worse yet, there are many things that have become standard that I look at and even though they are powerful enough to encourage the behavior of people obsessed with playing these games, I don't think they are the right way of building the future."

Grinding bad?

[DeadManCoding]

From the sounds of the article, Rasa feels that grinding is dominating MMO gameplay and that it's time to innovate. Having never played UO, but spending plenty of time in EQ and Warcraft, I can't say that all MMOs are dependent on grinding. I can understand a want to innovate and create a something completely new for MMOs, but in order for characters to advance, they need to be given waypoints to show completion. I agree that grinding doesn't have to be the only way, it's just the easiest way, and easily understandable to any MMO gamer out there.

UO=innovative and no one has gotten it right since

[Xlipse]

He's totally right and he doesn't need to offer suggestions -- he's just stating the obvious because that's apparently what all the MMOG developers have forgotten since the UO/EQ days. Now, it's mostly about keeping players on the hamster wheel (grind) and paying the monthly fee to make your parent company/publisher happy.

For example: WoW is a terrible GRIND when you compare it to a game like UO, which had a much more robust setting to play in. Uo had crafting, gathering, hunting, quests, treasure hunting, boating in the seas, dungeons, role playing, houses, player cities and PVP (and that's just from 1996 to 2000 when I played) Those were all *MAJOR* aspects of the game. In WOW, the only major aspects are: PVP and Gear Grinding.

BOOORRRINNNGGG

Games like UO were designed to be open ended and non-linear, unlike WoW (which I played for 2 years, BTW). The UO developers might not have thought players would create an innovative city (such as Oasis on the Sonoma server) or build Fish Tanks in their towers using scraps of cloth left over from crafting and the fish you could catch from the sea... but due to the open ended design of the game, you COULD do creative things like this -- ALL over the place in UO.

That's what he is saying and I agree with him.

Re:UO=innovative and no one has gotten it right si

[ZombieWomble]

Hang on hang on.

I played UO for years and years, it still has a fond place in my heart. But you're complaining about an excess of grinding in WoW, and then lauding UO for its gathering and crafting systems? They were nothing but a grind, and even less engaging in general due to the extremely repetitive nature of the activity and general lack of threat (barring random PvP encounters if you chose to do it in Felucca, obviously). Similarly - hunting and treasure hunting form two of the primary quest archetypes of WoW also (and are, I would argue, better developed in the latter setting). "Dungeons" are much better developed in WoW (although the instancing does somewhat detract from the fun of that, from a certain point of view) and are the main setting of the gear grind in WoW.

In terms of actual game mechanics, I would suggest that WoW beats UO hands down - many of the concepts you laud in UO are not only present in WoW, but are refined and improved on. What's different is primarily the arrangement of the world, and the adjacent mechanics which aren't strictly related to "gameplay". WoW is very clearly a path from A to B, where A is level 1 and B is a pimped out level 70. You can take small diversions along the path (crafting, RP, etc), but basically they are all fitted in to support your primary profession of bashing creatures' faces in. UO, on the other hand, had a much broader scope: there was no fundamental need to go kill beasts of any sort (indeed, it was often not that profitable to do so) and you could build a skillset completely independent of your ability to smash faces and still have a complete, meaningful character. Coupled with the additional mechanics for interacting with the world (which rarely affected actual mechanics), you have a recipe for a much more broader, more realistic feeling world than that offered by the rather linear pathway in WoW and similar MMOs.

Re:Grinding bad?

[cching]

I agree that grinding doesn't have to be the only way, it's just the easiest way, and easily understandable to any MMO gamer out there.

So what? I mean, you kind of come off as defending adding grinding to a game "because it's what people know." That's just claiming MMO's don't need innovation.

I'm sorry, I've played a lot of MMO's over the years and I am sick to death of mindless grinding. Bring on the innovation, make games fun again. For those that love grinding, you can play the games that are out there.

Let me also just say this. Whatever Blizzard developer came up with mote grinding ought to be taken out back and tarred and feathered. Yeah I do it, but I really think there has to be a better way than just throwing up your hands and saying "I give up, let's just add another grind."