Monday Mutterings: New Year, New Continent
Dialogue, 2003-12-22

Right now I'm planning a trip. Despite having traveled back and forth across the country relatively often over the past decade or so, I haven't been on a really big all-out vacation in over a decade. I'm pretty excited about it. In my case, I'm heading towards Disneyworld. What has this to do with MMOGs, you may ask? Well, why can't your MMOG character go on a vacation? What has he done to deserve the never ending slog through monster after monster with no reprieve in site? I think a vacation is mightily due for our online personas.

Short term content pushes are great. The concept (if not the execution) behind Star Wars Galaxy's storylines is a good one. A better way of opening new content to player would be something more along the lines of a vacation. Say you've been grinding away, and you finally reach level 10. Why not allow the player access to a new zone, for just a little while? Say, a week, or 48 hours? The zone is cool, and very different from what they're used to. Maybe it's nothing but a bunch of islands, or perhaps it's a zone where everyone has magical flight. A place where the game mechanic would get old after only a few weeks could be maintained as a special treat for players for only a limited amount of time.

Similarly, new content pushes would be even more enjoyable if they were to provide new scenery. The key here is that like the vacation zones, I've found that new content is best enjoyed if there is a time limit on it. (Expansions notwithstanding, of course.) Perhaps a temporary encampment set up by gypsies appears outside of one of the main towns? Or a mysterious ship enters the harbor (a ghost ship?) and is only there for a fortnight.

Giving players treats and changes of pace should be a goal of the dev team, above and beyond the simple "new content" mantra. Content is one thing, but an actual change of pace is something completely different.

On your left, the smoldering ruins of your home..

Every once in a while a lasting change of pace would be really excellent too. I don't know of any instance in a MMOG of a wide-scale change to a setting that stuck around. Minor tweaks, like town invasions and such, to be sure, but a real paradigm shift in a game world would be a really brave and intriguing thing to see. The fact that this hasn't been done before is actually pretty confusing to me. In a well established MMOG, after three years or more of playing the same old thing, why wouldn't you want a change of pace? Undoubtedly the major publishers see the expansions as a way of fulfilling this need, but I'm not sure I agree. After all, if you only target high level players with new continents or zones, then only high level players get the change of pace. Players who have played for all three years and are working on their tenth or fifteenth character at this point would undoubtedly like the same old same old to be not so old.

To use Everquest as an example, what if this Discord army that has been recently introduced really were to spread from the new continent and conquer all of Norrath? Wouldn't that be cool? Whole new opportunities for play would open up as the Discord armies spread across the land. Heroes could participate in epic battles as Discord mobs begin to change the level structure of old zones. Just think what play would be like in the middle of the old continent if the safe and secure hafling newbie zone were suddenly level 30-40?

Instead, we all know that the shining heroes of Norrath will push back the slavering hordes..yada.yada... Publishers have to be safe and make sure that there isn't too much change too quickly. They have to make changes in small amounts in expansions that are announced months ahead of time. Small developers are the ones that will have to pick up the mantle of change, of course. Or maybe, just maybe, the big boys are going to realize that we can't kill the same orc 100 times and still be having fun.