EQ Next: Best of show at E3!

[fadetree]

The irony is that if you give players what they say they want, you ruin the game. They *say* they want it easier, better, faster, more powerful, more convenient...but if you give it to them, they get bored and wander off.

[Gadwen]

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

The irony is that if you give players what they say they want, you ruin the game. They *say* they want it easier, better, faster, more powerful, more convenient...but if you give it to them, they get bored and wander off.

The accountants disagree.

[Swish]

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

The irony is that if you give players what they say they want, you ruin the game. They *say* they want it easier, better, faster, more powerful, more convenient...but if you give it to them, they get bored and wander off.

P99 would be a perfect example of it if everyone on here got what they wanted. There's a quote from nilbog somewhere about the server being some kind mutant creation if they implemented everything.

WoW just got stupid, still might look at an emulator for pre-Lich King but I was glad I quit [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[stormlord]

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

The irony is that if you give players what they say they want, you ruin the game. They *say* they want it easier, better, faster, more powerful, more convenient...but if you give it to them, they get bored and wander off.

Not true. All you gotta do is make them think you're making it easier, better, faster, more powerful and more convenient. Of course, with mudflation, you're limited somewhat in what you can do, but there're techniques they can use to reduce that effect. All they gotta do is understand player psychology.

People really do not fully consider the effect of declining populations, though. Companies panic when they start to lose popularity. As the numbers of incoming players go down and as mudflation wreaks havoc on the game, the quality goes down. The companies usually respond by giving the players easier access to the content and by copying what other games are doing. By copying what other games are doing they're ensuring that players who visit the game are less likely to feel like they're in unfamiliar territory. Essentially, games in decline will kill their own mother just to survive. And this is the ugly side, especially of big business.

Strangely, things are not always as they appear. Over the past 10-15 years I was led to believe that MMORPGs will only look more and more like WOW. They will degenerate and destroy all that's 'unnecessary' to the goal of addicting the player base. They'd become fancy slot machine games! Well, that's the feeling I HAD. However, I first played Wurm Online in July 2012. I gotta say that it impressed on me a feeling that surpasses Everquest 1. I first played Everquest 1 in March 1999. It burnt into my brain memorable moments. Even as I tried to play Ultima Online, I always felt drawn to Everquest 1 because of its 3d environment and more developed non-player world. But Wurm Online has created a sense of immersion I never felt in Everquest 1. That's mainly because the danger level in Wurm Online was higher, at least during my stay there, but it's more than that: everything in the world could be changed by the players. It truly feel like a breathing living world that slowly changed. It even had seasons. That moment when I stood on that hill, cold and frightened, in the clearcut and watched the stars and heard the wind is etched so permanently in my mind I will have to remember it for the rest of my life. NO moment in any other game has been so powerful. And I've had many similar moments in Wurm Online.

Wurm Online has a lot of grind because the skills aren't well fleshed out (and players like to grind, you know), but if you can stomach that part of it, this mmo sandbox is a beautiful gem.

Wurm Online is the spiritual successor to UO: Second Age and classic Everquest 1. But it too will grow old and degenerate. Even now I can see the "mudflation". I can see the age coming on.

No, immersion is not dead. It will be killed and resurrected forever, just as people die and children are born. I predict that in the future we will see game worlds far more complex and difficult than Everquest 1 was at its height. And I think that the line between 'game worlds' and 'worlds' is blurring too. It's hard to call these 'games'. They're more like fake realities than they're like games. You immerse in them and make another life. They're not there for you to have fun, they're there for you to create new unplanned experiences.

[t0lkien]

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

Wurm Online is the spiritual successor to UO: Second Age and classic Everquest 1.

I don't see how you can say Wurm Online is anything like EQ or UO. It's a sophisticated Minecraftesque world builder, not an RPG. It's a completely different genre IMO. It's like people who pimp Fantasy Star as some sort of EQ successor. They are so fundamentally different it's almost absurd to compare them.

[stormlord]

Originally Posted by t0lkien [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I don't see how you can say Wurm Online is anything like EQ or UO. It's a sophisticated Minecraftesque world builder, not an RPG. It's a completely different genre IMO. It's like people who pimp Fantasy Star as some sort of EQ successor. They are so fundamentally different it's almost absurd to compare them.

No it's not. You're thinking too strictly and not seeing the forest.

Wurm Online versus classic EQ1:
1) No in-game map
2) Corpse runs
3) Trains and tight aggro
4) Autoattack
5) Less hand holding
6) Night-time (you can turn up gamma, but it's still washed out)
7) Lose skill experience when you die (similar to losing level experience)

Wurm Online versus Ultima Online: Second Age:
1) Skill-based (not class-based)
2) Sandbox; cutting trees; making campfires; building houses; primitive ecology(!); nuff said!
3) No rules pvp on epic servers and semi-restricted pvp on Chaos
4) Boats; UO was famous for its implementation of boats

Wurm Online even has some basic quests. It steers away from the casual idea that everything has to have a symbol floating above it or a exclamation mark so you don't (by chance) miss it. So I may see a corpse in the distance while swimming and miss it because it's so small. And yet if I see it and then swim to it I might discover a treasure trove of old rotting gear that I'll be able to repair and take home with me. (This actually happened to me several times. Most of the time corpses only have 'less' valuable stuff left behind by the owner.)

I'll admit that Wurm Online doesn't have the deep lore and npc population that Everquest 1 had. It doesn't have nearly as many quests as Everquest 1 had. Almost all of its weapons/armour are player-made. Its dungeons are player-made (and yes creatures can be inside them; in fact, 'dungeons' are actually old mines).

Wurm Online doesn't have the recall/mark spells that were used in Ultima Online to travel across the map. It doesn't have the treasure chest quest maps, but it certainly has old corpses and items leftover from bygone era's that're LIKE treasure. There're official map dumps that show the whole world. So you can actually hunt down areas that look built up on the map and explore them for old treasure. It doesn't have the mini-map. Creatures don't "talk". There're no wandering healers. Dragons were a lot more common in Ultima Online.

Wurm Online does have hte ability to spawn at your (deeded) settlement if you die. And you may also spawn at any allied settlement on the map. But this teleportation only allows no-drop items to carry-over.

Wurm Online is less combat-focused than EQ1 or Ultima Online too. HOWEVER, there's still lots of combat and if you seek it you shall find it. Oftentimes, it finds you. Early on, you're much more defensive-minded. But as players get better they can hunt more. And on pvp servers there're sieging mechanics as well.

But you know what? These differences are minor to me. Wurm Online is a more advanced sandbox than Ultima Online: Second Age. That, combined with some of the mechanics you found in classic Everquest 1, makes it feel very much to me like a spiritual heir to them. It feels more like them than it does Minecraft.

I played Ultima Online and EQ1 for several years off and on. I know how they feel. I'm referring more to how they play than anything else. Minecraft is too soft without the hard edges. EQ2 doesn't have a sandbox and is also too soft. Vanguard-soh is too streamlined and wasn't developed in the sandbox direction. I wanted so much to see Vanguard-soh be THAT game, but it never came to be and instead became too cautious. There's a long list of MMO's that're somewhat similar to Wurm Online but they do not share similarities with classic EQ1 or old-style UO. Most MMO's out there have abandoned the tight aggro and corpse runs and no in-game maps and free-for-all pvp and various other mechanics associated with old EQ1 and/or old UO.

I expect Wurm Online to degenerate as it ages. It has been around since 2006 and you can see all of the things it has axed as it has aged. Despite all that, for now it has been amazing. My contention is that we will see games like this pop up now and then for eternity. It's just the way things are. I don't necessarily mean they have to have corpse runs for eternity, I mean they're dangerous and not friendly to players. Obviously, the normal is to treat players like they're royalty. This is especially true if a company feels desperate or greedy; like most do. So it's very hard to find a game like this where it's not ocd about being friendly.