ggwood's Journal: MMORPG Outdoor Zone and Event Design

Many newer MMORPGs have no exact "zones" but they all have areas of some kind where players adventure: kill mobs, explore, sometimes buy and sell goods, sometimes start or end quests, etc.

Open, "outdoor" zones:

Wide open spaces allow players to interact more with each other in positive ways: find groups, travel easily to grouping locations, and have good visibility to find mobs or other NPCs. Good outdoor spaces will have a hard floor on mob level, so that groups are ensured at least a certain level of difficulty and not to have to slog through loads of mobs which (for them) are trivial to get to the good ones. This is a tremendous waste of resources: the most vital of which is player time. Good quests are essential to get players to move around the zone. Players should be rewarded for killing a few from column A, a few from column B, etc. instead of "camping" a certain local.

However, if camps are desired (perhaps players will move between them) they should have clear cut mobs to pull from to minimize conflicts between groups over who "gets" to kill which mob.

There should be higher level mobs roaming the area to add danger to what can easily become too safe a situation. These do not have to be unkillable by the typical zone population, but they should require at least multiple groups combining forces. Killing these mobs should have benefits for those involved (exp, money, loot) as well as the general benefit of making the entire zone safer. They should not be camped by high level players so any quest items they drop should not be endlessly re-doable, and the cash they drop should be low enough that higher level players should be able to go elsewhere and do better for themselves.

The zone should respond dynamically to the presence of players. Lots of killing could cause wandering merchent NPCs to spawn who all zone users can benefit from. Perhaps a moneychanger could spawn who would (for a fee) change player's cash to more easily carried coins.

Mini-boss mobs could spawn in places which have been "beaten down" significantly, for a long time. They should be killable by solid groups. If the solid group beats down an orc village for a while, this fellow should spawn and give them a hard time. If two groups are holding the village down, they may have to cooperate to defeat him. If they are each strong enough to do so individually, they are likely competing in an overcrowded zone. Although it may not be possible for the zone to really fully satisfy them both, harder spawns should help. In this case, either (a) they should move to other zones (b) this zone is the bottleneck for a quest or (c) simply more total content is needed (no other zones are less crowded).

For underused zones, the zone should eventually achieve a sweet, attractive character to welcome new characters in. Perhaps all the big wandering bosses would vanish and mobs would revert to rather weak forms. The lootable "trees" or chests would be full. Perhaps XP or loot bonuses could be assigned to mobs not killed for several real life days. This should attract players back to this underutilized area. Perhaps a message could be issued to players upon entering the zone, or perhaps the clues would be more subtle.

Zonewide calendar based "events" should occur: trivial changes have been day and night and weather (in outdoor zones) which lead to different mobs spawning. However, seasons could change and more realistic weather (snow in winter, rivers running dry in summer, flowers bloooming in spring, leaves falling in Fall) could be added. I would suggest a season should correspond to at least a week of realtime. At most, players would have to wait three weeks to see the proper season again, but they could log in any time during that week (it ensures a weekend, and prime time) and it would be that season. There could be seasonal quests which require a person to log in once a week for four weeks in a particular zone to complete. These would be for more casual players (who populate outdoor zones more in general).

Mob population and quest distribution and NPC locations could change with season. It doesn't have to be drastic. It could be simply an NPC is indoors in winter and fishing in Spring and simply outdoors in Summer and Fall. It could be quite dramatic with entire people gone.

Real playstyle effecting events could be like an army of orcs appearing and if left unchallenged, will march around wiping out all the other camps (the goblins and kobalds and wolves or whatever). This even could be "nipped in the bud" by offing the "orc drummers" who spawn and begin to summon the army. Once the army makes one trip (or two or whatever) which may take, say, 45 min they despawn, perhaps announcing their victory to the zone. In some sense, it is a challenge to the players not to allow it to occur again. Perhaps the commander of the orc army could drop nice loot. It would clearly take a significant force to bring the army down.

NPC lead player army (or counter army): to counter this, players could "sign up" in groups with a NPC leader which forms a PC army to counter the orc army. They're automatically in a raid force, with the first group leader as effecive raid leader. However, up to (4?5?) groups could sign up with the NPC leader, who would be rather buff. Perhaps some NPCs could spawn if not enough PC's join in. At some point, the two forces would head toward each other with respective leaders shouting challenges. It is likely to be a messy event, but every participant on a winning PC side should get some token for having been there.

Druids and other nature attuned players should be able to have special knowedge in such zones. Spells could alter the weather, let's say, and thus the mob-spawning. Dueling druids could change it back, however, so the players should only be able to push it in one direction, and that direction should benefit everyone. E.g. it should not eliminate anyones quest NPC, if anything it should spawn more.