[Opinion] EQ Next - Game Changers/Breakers

[t0lkien]

Originally Posted by August [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I don't disagree with you, and if you read more than just that one snippet you would see i've made the same points, and how to solve them in an instanced environment, specifically I have mentioned (2) - and btw, that is still an 'instance'. Once again, most people are comparing 'instances' to post-TBC WoW linear instances that are a 15 minute joy ride of face rolling. That's not what I'm advocating for.

Time limited instances in a "world" - what is the justification within the game world for it? It breaks the 4th wall without even acknowledging it - as the instances themselves did. Notice how the "solutions" created to solve the problems the original bad "solution" created get more and more inelegant and more and more "gamey"? This is what those of us advocating no instance worlds are saying. This breaking of immersion goes on and on. It's an ugly solution to a non-existent problem by people who don't understand, respect, or care for the game world. Any instance does this - it is an illogical, de-immersive departure from the continuity of the game world. An exception would be where the game world supports it, as in a sci-fi or overtly "online" setting such as we had in the now defunct Otherland game, and where it makes perfect sense and instead of fracturing the world actually strengthens it.

Mind you, once gamers accepted bright yellow question marks and exclamation marks hovering over NPC heads, it was all downhill in that sense. As I know I keep saying, we are talking about fundamentally different types of games. This is why many of us are back in EQ - the "modern" mindset of game design has lost its way.

This isn't just rhetoric, at least for me. I spent 3 years on a next-gen MMO arguing continually these points, and from this perspective. During one heated discussion on a design point, I had the epiphany that we were all talking about different types of games. Developers now look at game design as a "craft". You have a bunch of mechanics and tools, like little blocks, and your job is to fit them together to suit the project. There are accepted structures and mechanics. If you dare to question the "industry practice", and point out that maybe some of those blocks are questionable, you are a pariah. I'm not kidding, it's really that way. It's now a bunch of pompous nerds enforcing intellectual and creative reductionism. There are exceptions, but they are viewed as mavericks.

Unfortunately, the only MMO that plays by the rules that I want (or close to it), is classic EQ. And there are a lot of people who feel the same way.