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[Vocenoctum]

Originally Posted by Felon

promptly go wandering the landscape engaging in pointless, repetitive melee with an environment stocked with infinitely-respawning mobs.

Like in the other thread, I'd point out that a lot of games are like that really. Sure they generally have tighter plots, but a lot of times it's as easy to ignore as anything. Oblivion was a great game IMO, but could easily be described as a central quest chain of most MMO's.

Does the massive-multiplayer element really add anything? It seems that the games are so massive that it's rare for anybody to take notice of anybody else. It's that kind of big-city isolation, where you're isolated even when you're in a crowd. What a waste.

One of the most fun things in Tabula Rasa was that the bases were occasionally attacked. The aliens would take the base and all the NPC's would hop a drop ship out. You could defend the base, or retake the base (in which case the NPC's dropped back in via ship).

It was fun being part of a wave of soldiers retaking a base from the aliens.

(TR also took the effort to have most mobs "spawn" in a more believable manner. A boar wouldn't simply fade into sight, he'd wander out of a bush. The aliens would arrive via ship or be phased back in with a teleportation circle.)

I wonder why MMO's play it so safe. Why are there never any big dramatic cutscenes, for instance? Why is it so easy to go through a quest/mission without really having any idea what it was about?

Wrath of the Lich King actually has a cutscene in one quest line, it's not up to the quality of the preview/intro cutscene, but it was nicely done. Just the one though.

The other "innovation" with Wrath is "phasing". It adds a semi-permenance to some areas in Northrend. When you attack and achieve the objectives to clear this one field of battle, it is then "replaced" with a cleared field and new objectives. You retake a hill and defend it, and it's replaced with a tower and a new flightpoint. You're still in the same Zone, but with Phasing, you see your "version" of it.

The disadvantage is of course that you can't interact with other PC's in a different zone, but I do like the small changes.

(Same way on some quests, once you saved the treants from the evil spirits, they became neutral spawns to you rather than hostile, a little touch but nice for a sense of "change".)