What can MMORPGs teach us about world building?

[ProfessorCirno]

As others have said, the important ones are:

*Locals without a quest. Have them stumble across dungeons or ruins and other similar things - give them a feeling that the world exists beyond just them.
*Diversity. Nobody wants to do quests in Ye Old England forever.
*Multiple incentives. Don't just give one hint that there's cool stuff in a dungeon, give several!
*Don't go overload on the fluff.

I'm going to add two here:

*Players can make their own stories. Why is this linked to MMORPG? Ultima Online was HUGE for player-made content lore, stories, cities, etc, with there being almost no "official" player-made content. A cruder version exists in most RP servers in most other MMORPGs. Let players make guilds and gather NPCs. Increase their foothold and input into the universe. Maybe in Heroic they have a house, in Paragon they have a guild, and in Epic they have a kingdom (Screw around and raise/lower the stakes as you see fit).

*This is in direct opposition to your DMG, but make other adventurers. Even if your story has your players as THE ONLY ONES THAT CAN STOP HITLER MCNASTYSTALIN'S DOOM FORTRESS, make other - if lower level/power - adventurers. It gives the PCs a sense of ranking. Maybe when they start, the other adventurers they meet are obviously more powerful. Later on though, they're the strong ones. And of course, having other groups of adventurers gives more reasons for them to make a kingdom/guild/mark on the setting. How bad is that BBEG? He just ripped the heart out of that warlock you were buddies with! How powerful is your influence? Several adventuring parties are now going out with you as their role model! Furthermore, the other adventurers increase - not decrease - the sense of excitement and discovery. If you are literally the only other adventurers, then it's not very exciting to keep trippping over forgotten tombs. But if you're one of many groups, you're not just "the crazy bloke who goes into the woods," you were the group of adventurers that found and defeated the Lich of Toomanyvowels is in the Tombs of Evilsoundingnoun. You aren't the only adventurers out there - but you are the ones that did the good deed. And next time you hit the tavern, those other adventurers are going to be eagre to hear your stories.

And here's something to ignore from MMORPGS:

*Never go back to the last hub

No. Do not do this. Do not fall into the trap of "WELL WE USED UP THIS TOWN FOR IT'S QUESTS, TIME TO MOVE ON AND NEVER RETURN." Let your characters make an actual HQ. Sure, they have to go out to their adventures, and maybe have a small village or two that needs some evil butt kicking, but then something like "DEMONS ARE ATTACKING OUR HEADQUARTERS!" or some other big thing can bring them back to a town/city they've invested a lot of time and emotion into. It makes them care more.

 

[Hjorimir]

Despite >700 days played, I forgot that there was an EQ-time that moves differently than normal time.

/hangs head in shame

EQ, for me, is still the greatest MMORPG yet made; I just can't get into the easy mode of today's MMORPGs.

 

[Gog]

EQ, for me, is still the greatest MMORPG yet made; I just can't get into the easy mode of today's MMORPGs.

I missed it when they took away being able to loot the dead PC's. Still like WOW more though mostly becaue of the travel thing. I hated going anywhere in EQ.

 

[Jack99]

EQ, for me, is still the greatest MMORPG yet made; I just can't get into the easy mode of today's MMORPGs.

Oldschool breaking of PoF will never be beaten for hardcoreness (is that even a word?). That was just brutal.

 

[Hjorimir]

Oldschool breaking of PoF will never be beaten for hardcoreness (is that even a word?). That was just brutal.

Good times! When PoF opened a friend of mine lost his corpse on the PoF, but I eventually fished it out with my monk.

Damn, those were the days.

 

[Woas]

What they tell me is that they are mostly irrelevant unless you are actually there using it.

For example: That troll village on some other part of the game server that you'll never visit? Sure in an MMO where there is hundreds, thousands and maybe tens of thousands of people playing, there was a need to develop and code and place all that gfx stuff and people play as those trolls. But pulling away from the requirements of computer software for a minute and getting into a more... metaphysical sense. Your character will never visit that place. It was a waste of time. Same as your races town was a waste of time in the perspective to the person playing that troll.

 

[N0Man]

Well, in general you could say that you need to make the worlds bigger. I mean you can get from one end of a MMORPG world to the other end in a fairly short time, even on foot (Hours at most)

A world that size might be problematic for RPG's.

It's apples an oranges, and scale is relative.

Scale in an MMRPG has to be an abstraction, to some degree.

When you are playing a pen and paper game, the distances aren't real, they are just arbitrary distances and time durations needed to get to them, and the relation to real time is quite flexible.

In pen and paper, you can cross an ocean in the time it takes for the DM to say, "You sail for 2 months. You are quite fortunate, and the weather was mild the entire journey, and the winds and currents were in your favor. Your ship approaches harbor, when in the distance you see signs that there is some kind of battle occurring." So, the 2 month trip across the ocean took seconds of play time, but the encounters that might occur on the day they land might take hours of play time.

MMRPGs don't have the freedom to stretch time for everyone individually due to the "MM" in MMRPG. If worlds were built to a realistic scale, then we'd be spending 99% of the time traveling and 1% actually adventuring.

And if tabletop games didn't have the ability to stretch and shrink time, then we'd have to sit around and do nothing for large amounts of time, just to recover from a previous battle... and we might think we're playing "Classic" EverQuest.

 

[N0Man]

Good times! When PoF opened a friend of mine lost his corpse on the PoF, but I eventually fished it out with my monk.

Damn, those were the days.

Everyone's tastes are different... frankly, I can't even conceive of how anyone can actually feel nostalgic talking about PoF. Discussions of PoF, among my friends, sound a lot like trash talking an ex-significant other, remembering how terrible they were, and wondering why you were ever with them in the first place.

POF was brutal... It was frustrating, stressful, unforgiving, buggy, punishing, and sadistic. And that's just the zone itself, and doesn't count other random factors like some jerks on the server who train your raid and get you killed in a very very very bad place.

I remember one of oldest and most established casual (raiding light) guilds on my server had a minor guild split over a PoF mishap that turned really ugly (wipes, respawns, difficulty retrieving corpses, a griefer, etc)

 

[Hjorimir]

Everyone's tastes are different... frankly, I can't even conceive of how anyone can actually feel nostalgic talking about PoF. Discussions of PoF, among my friends, sound a lot like trash talking an ex-significant other, remembering how terrible they were, and wondering why you were ever with them in the first place.

POF was brutal... It was frustrating, stressful, unforgiving, buggy, punishing, and sadistic. And that's just the zone itself, and doesn't count other random factors like some jerks on the server who train your raid and get you killed in a very very very bad place.

I remember one of oldest and most established casual (raiding light) guilds on my server had a minor guild split over a PoF mishap that turned really ugly (wipes, respawns, difficulty retrieving corpses, a griefer, etc)

EQ was the only MMORPG I've played (and I've played plenty) where I actually felt any sense of accomlishment. You're right, it could be frustrating, stressfull, and very, very unforgiving, but I think that's what made it exhilerating; today's MMORPGs are just too easy for me to enjoy long term.

As for being trained and such, well I miss that too if only for the fact that shared zones are a breeding ground for community. In WoW, for example, you can play on a hugely populated server and know nobody other than the members of your own guild...everybody else is just traffic. In EQ you knew (and maybe even hated) TONS of other players. You knew them from being forced to come to terms with each other. I miss that.