David's Blog

My love/hate affair with MMORPGs

My first MMO was Ultima Online when I was 17 and I played that for 4 years off and on, I made lots of great friends and my char was ‘Tren Harkingson’ on the Europa shard (if anyone remembers me) I dabbled with Everquest and Asheron’s Call followed quickly by Dark ages of Camelot, but by this time I knew I was falling out of love with MMO’s. I did put 3 years into Eve Online though but that was sporadic with lots of time away.

I realised that I was wasting way to much time playing these games and the only thing that really kept me coming back was the social side of things and talking to people in my guild/clan the games themselves where getting progressively shallower in terms of interactivity with and immersion in the game world it’s self.
I still pick up the newest MMO every so often, Conan, and Darkfall, but they have all been fleeting, I have’t even tried WOW.

What I fell in love with was a persistent virtual world crafted with such attention to detail as to draw you in and hold the immersion, it was dynamic enough that the mob spawns wondered the world and fought each other and you could build your house anywhere you could find room, and player run towns sprung up everywhere. You could herd and shear sheep, harvest crops, play statesman/general, or go on far away adventures collecting rare items. Even most of the tools you used where player craftable. It defined the term ‘sandbox’ for me.

Nothing else since has had the same level of what tends to get referred to as ‘fluff’ and what I call attention to detail since. I am sure its this that captured my imagination, it’s like they created a deep and dynamic virtual world first and then sort to use it as a setting or stage for a game rather than the other way around.

The magic may have just come from the fact it was really the first of its kind and the people that played it were for the most part geeks and nerds that had previously played paper based role-playing games, you could kill someone and steal all of there stuff but it didn’t happen all that often and people stuck together and helped each other out alot more that modern full loot games.

Ever since leaving UO I have wanted to create its spiritual successor, an even more lush, detailed and dynamic world, but I have been biding my time waiting for both my knowledge and the technology to grow to a point where my vision for an MMO is feasible, I think we may be approaching that time…

I am worried that the magic of UO will be imposable to re-capture, the world (real) has moved on, the types of people that play these games have changed, I have changed, but the impression it left on me was so great I think I still need to try.

If anyone is interested in helping trying to create an UO inspired 3D MMO feel free to get in contact, I could use all the help I can get on this one.

It might not work and all the big company’s obviously don’t think it could as each new game they produce is getting progressively more ‘themepark like’ to the extent that games such as Darkfall can now be labled as sandbox.

I want to create a large procedurally generated landscape with dynamic forests and foliage, all the development effort will go into creating the things that players can build and interact with, monster spawns will be dynamic and towns and city’s player built. The term sandbox is overused and has nearly lost all meaning, but that’s what I want to create a true sandbox rpg world.

13 April 2010 ·