DDI, the VTT, and an Untapped Market--People Like Me

[malraux]

It's unfortunate that you are not directly familiar. I do understand the premise but was hoping someone who is a tabletop gamer could give a pro/con report of how such a thing stacks up compared to actual tabletop gaming, which one would expect VTT usage to cleave as closely to as the tech allows.

Minor point, I don't expect WoW to be anywhere as close to a substitute for direct table top gaming as actual table top gaming can, by definition, be. The question is more how well does WoW act as a substitute relative to an electronic table top (be it the VTT or maptool or whatever), especially for the less regular player as joe described himself.

 

[Corinth]

WOW isn't a VTT substitute because the point of WOW is dungeons and raiding, with a side order of PVP, in real time. It's not at all about doing things that running a tabletop RPG through a VTT would be about.

 

[malraux]

WOW isn't a VTT substitute because the point of WOW is dungeons and raiding, with a side order of PVP, in real time. It's not at all about doing things that running a tabletop RPG through a VTT would be about.

Which would be? Remember, this is in response to the statement

If they got the VTT thing going, and I was able to login on a boring Thursday night for a couple hours and take part in a pickup game in some guy's dungeon that he threw together, that would be cool as hell. It's sort of like a combo between Diablo and D&D. An interactive tactical combat Diablo style game, which can be changed by the players thru interaction with the DM. I would actually buy 4e books and learn the system for that. I would subscribe to DDI for that.

Certainly some of that desire is filled by WoW. Perhaps not perfectly, but WoW does also bring other advantages to the situation. Its certainly interactive tactical combat. It can be played in a pickup fashion. WoW is certainly a combo of Diablo and D&D.

 

[Corinth]

Which would be? Remember, this is in response to the statement

Certainly some of that desire is filled by WoW. Perhaps not perfectly, but WoW does also bring other advantages to the situation. Its certainly interactive tactical combat. It can be played in a pickup fashion. WoW is certainly a combo of Diablo and D&D.

You're expected to race to the cap. Once at the cap, you're expected to race through the gearing process such that you're ready for entry-level raids and all Heroic dungeons; events like the current Argent Tournament help greating for an alt or a new player at this stage. Once geared, it's either Arena or Die or it's Raid or Die. You show up, do your Dailies for income, buy your consumables for the week, and then either help guildies, level an alt or logoff until it's Arena or Raid time. At no time are you actually role-playing, even on a RP server. (And I do know this to be true; I've been on a RP server for two years.)

The RP of WOW is the freeform RP forum style that has no need for math or anything other than the basics of improv sports, and that's done only in set places amongst established cliques. WOW is, at best, indifferent; usually it's outright and openly hostile to RP, starting with the developers and filtering out from there. Go elsewhere for this sort of thing.

 

[Mark]

Thanks for the added details, Corinth.

 

[malraux]

You're expected to race to the cap. Once at the cap, you're expected to race through the gearing process such that you're ready for entry-level raids and all Heroic dungeons; events like the current Argent Tournament help greating for an alt or a new player at this stage. Once geared, it's either Arena or Die or it's Raid or Die. You show up, do your Dailies for income, buy your consumables for the week, and then either help guildies, level an alt or logoff until it's Arena or Raid time. At no time are you actually role-playing, even on a RP server. (And I do know this to be true; I've been on a RP server for two years.)

The RP of WOW is the freeform RP forum style that has no need for math or anything other than the basics of improv sports, and that's done only in set places amongst established cliques. WOW is, at best, indifferent; usually it's outright and openly hostile to RP, starting with the developers and filtering out from there. Go elsewhere for this sort of thing.

Again, this is in the context of someone wanting to play a character through dungeons similar in design to diablo. That's pretty much not going to involve deep role playing either.

 

[SiderisAnon]

Comparing WoW to Tabletop

It's unfortunate that you are not directly familiar. I do understand the premise but was hoping someone who is a tabletop gamer could give a pro/con report of how such a thing stacks up compared to actual tabletop gaming, which one would expect VTT usage to cleave as closely to as the tech allows.

I'll bite. I have been running tabletop for over 20 years and playing World of Warcraft (WoW) for almost two. Here's my comparison of how they stack up.

(FYI-> There are three server types: RP is roleplaying, which I believe are all PVE. A PVP server is Player-versus-Player and anyone who is on the other side can attack you. A PVE server is Player-versus-Environment, where you cannot be attacked by other players unless you specifically flag yourself for this.)

Comparing WoW to tabletop is beyond comparing apples to oranges. It's practically comparing apples to ducks. Yeah, both are alive, have skin, and are edible, but really that's about it.

WoW is a video game where you are playing the video game itself. It is a self contained world with its own rules and it's own method of play. You are no more playing D&D than if you were playing the old Bard's Tale game or Diablo on your home computer. You are limited exclusively to the monsters the coders put in place, the quests they designed, and the limited options the game gives you.

Yes, they have so-called roleplaying servers, but the only difference between those and a standard PVE server is that people talk "in character" while playing the game. You still have absolutely no freedom. In some ways, it's just doing a little "let's pretend" while you're killing pixels for a few hours. (Not that I'm opposed to this. It makes the video game more fun, in my opinion.) It is not D&D.

One of the big bonuses of D&D is that you can do anything you want. Want to turn that enemy fortress you just cleaned out into a base? Okay. Want to sail a ship down to that new island you heard about? Go for it. Want to take this week off of D&D and play Star Wars or want to try something different and play some high level characters from start? You can do that.

WoW simply doesn't have this. You have choices, yes, but these choices are sharply limited by the game itself, as they have to be in a video game.

Now, unlike D&D, you can start up WoW anytime you want and play. You can run around a lovely world exploring, killing monsters, doing quests, or questing. You may even have some friends to talk to. WoW is mostly no different than playing a video game on your computer and having a chat program running at the same time.

(There is content in WoW designed so that you have to have multiple people working together to complete it, but to me that is the least like D&D of anything in WoW. It's more like a group of mercenaries who get together briefly to take out an enemy they all have a contract on.)

If you wanted a tabletop experience or anything similar, you would need to scrap the WoW engine entirely. What you would end up with is a tool box of locations, monsters, and items you could lay out to create the visual. Everything else would be chats, whether typed or voice. Neverwinter Nights one had a toolbox where you could do something like this, and where you could even network in with your friends, yet it did not ever seem to be a popular way to game.



Understand, I love World of Warcraft. I play it frequently. It can also be a nice buffer to help me get to my next gaming fix. However, Neverwinter Nights was also such a buffer for me. WoW is not tabletop and the two are only alike in that they are sword and sorcery fantasy based games.


So, I was supposed to compare pros/cons. Ummm.....

Pros and Cons:

WoW:
+ Fun
+ Can play anytime you want
+ Very pretty
- Limited freedom
- Can get very repetitive over time

Tabletop:
+ Fun
+ Unlimited freedom
+ There are always new things to try
- Have to get people together


I play both and enjoy them as different activities.

 

[Mark]

Thanks, SiderisAnon!

 

[UngainlyTitan]

snip
Neverwinter Nights one had a toolbox where you could do something like this, and where you could even network in with your friends, yet it did not ever seem to be a popular way to game.

A couple of friends and I spend some time on Neverwinter Nights and we had a pretty good experience. Since there was only 3 of us we never bothered to try DM based stuff. It was closer to a tabletop than any MMO I have tried but you were stuck with the game engine. A VTT does not interpret the rules so you are only limited by the DM as per a normal face to face game.

 

[wedgeski]

I've played WoW since it opened, but have only recently delved into RP servers. WoW RP is almost completely player-driven. The extent of in-game support for it is:

- Separate RP realms with loosely enforced rules to prevent context-jarring character names and outright flouting of the 'policy', such as it is.
- A selection of mundane items (i.e. no stat bonus) which are there purely for the cool factor and to enhance your ability to create a persona. Many of these are extremely hard to get.
- A simple 'emote' system, with a few dozen built-in options (/chuckle, /bow, /salute, /yes, /no, etc.) which have associated audio and animations.

That's about the extent of it that I can think of. Now on top of this, the player-base can enhance the whole experience depending on the amount of effort they put in.

Simple in-character chat, using the WoW lore as a whole and your race/class lore in particular, can elevate the experience surprisingly well. Just last night I met a random troll Hunter who supposed to argue that the troll race are purer huntsman than the tauren, all while we partied and executed an escort quest in a contested zone. The conversation was fun, our reactions to unfolding events were fun, and we agreed to disagree before making our separate ways.

A friend of mine who used to run an RP guild would arrange RP 'events' with other like-minded guilds; in this way you can set up quite interesting story paths and characterisations. The whole thing tends to be very scripted but with imagainative guild masters and players who buy wholly into the experience, I can see this kind of thing working very well, and hope to try it myself.

This of course is no substitute for D&D because the constraints of the game world limit your options considerably. Blizzard could do more to facilitate this side of the game (support for limited in-game scripting, the ability to build quests, better guild facilities, inter-guild rivalries, etc.) but with enthusiastic players, the simple joy of roleplaying is as rewarding in WoW as it is face-to-face.