Response: Are MMOs too easy?

This is a response post to a good article by Mark Kern, a developer working on Firefall, that poses the question “Are MMOs too easy?”.

Check out the original article here: http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/7540/Have-MMOs-Become-Too-Easy.html

The two-point gist of Kern’s piece was this;

1. As WoW began dumbing down questing with the quest helper, by raising xp gained exponentially, and by giving out easy to obtain quest gear that dwarfed raid gear from the last xpac, they attracted the masses of casual gamers.  Thus creating an industry phenomenon  and putting a bullseye on the goldengoose casual market for the rest of the MMO industry.  This required every other developer to respond in the easy-content arms race.

To sum up this point with a quote from the article;

Sometimes I look at WoW and think “what have we done?” I think I know. I think we killed a genre.

2. That an MMO should be about the journey to level cap, not the end-game.

I think these are both very valid and popular opinions.  I will respond in detail to both points.

1. Did WoW make MMOs easy-mode?

First, let’s consider what MMOs were like before WoW.   I played Star Wars Galaxies for a year or so before WoW.  I never player EQ but from the descriptions I’ve heard, it seemed to be on par with SWG when it comes to the overall playstyle, except maybe more PvP focus in SWG.   The SWG leveling experience consisted of grinding out experience by picking up kill missions, running to the waypoint and killing the nest of whatever beasty the mission sent you to.  This was most efficient with a group.  But the group was really just to boost the xp and damage so that the xp gain was faster.  As far as I know of EQ, leveling consisted of grinding mobs in groups to gain xp.

Was that style of gameplay really more difficult than WoW questing?  No, not at all.  I had a group of people.  We would basically just mow down weaker enemies for the xp until we were maxed out.  Same for EQ.  I’d say questing in WoW is more challenging than this simply because there is a chance you will pull too many mobs and die.  There was basically no chance of death in a good SWG xp group.  If I chose to solo, which the game was not designed for, it was a much more punishing experience but truth be told, levels could still be gained with the right build.  Just slower.  EQ was similar.  But also had an additional punishing element in that death often required long corpse runs from timbuktu.   I would concede that this style of gameplay was far more punishing and far less accessible than modern questing.   Don’t forget that we also have the option nowadays to run dungeons (my preferred method) or do PvP in order to gain levels.  Both of these would be considered far more accessible and far less punishing and less time-consuming than leveling in classic EQ or SWG.

But essentially, the leveling experience consisted of grinding mobs in groups to gain xp until level cap.  Is this the much touted “journey” of which this article speaks?  It completely relied upon other players to make it compelling in any way.  If you were on a friendly server, grats!  You were going to have a good experience.  If you could get into a good guild, grats!  You were going to have a good experience.  If not, you were out of luck.   How is this different than today?!!!  You can quest grind with a buddy today just as you could then.  You can grind dungeons in a guild group from lvl 1 to lvl 90.  The difference between the game today and pre-WoW is not difficulty in the leveling.  It’s accessibility, a much lower time requirement, and lack of punishing mechanics.

Let’s consider end-game content.  PreNGE SWG’s end-game was basically PvP, crafting, or a handful of PvE encounters.

• PvP was fun at times.  Especially if you were on one of the crazy rivalry servers where it was basically constant war.  Fun!  You needed to gather the best buffs for you and your team and just getting buffed was an hour long process.  The actual PvP itself lacked much of the depth that modern PvP has.  CC was almost non-existent.  It was mostly a ‘let’s trade punches’ kind of fight with some status ailments added in to spice it up a bit.
• Crafting was also pretty compelling.  I ran a competative armor shop for a while. You had to plant your harvesters on randomly spawning minerals and collect them for your wares.  Depending on the stats of the minerals, your armor/weapons/whatever could be significantly higher or lower quality than what someone else made.  It required dilligence in gathering minerals, dilligence in maintaining your shop, and dilligence just to grind out the crafting to get capped in the profession (most used self-sustaining macros though tbh and didn’t even level it themself).
• Lastly, endgame PvE was not really enough to sustain one’s total playtime.  You could grind challenging monsters like Krayt Dragons for rare items.  There were a few somewhat taxing encounters and even an early attempt at an instance.  The trinity was present, but not completely neccessary much of the time.  A tank was only marginally more survivable than anyone else.  And any player could grab healing skills and do a bit of healing if they liked.  Kind of GW2ish really. EQ was more about camping open world bosses.  I’ve heard horror stories of camping a boss for days on end only to have another guild get the kill. Fun?!  Don’t know about that, but definately less accessible, more punishing, and more time consuming.

Compare this to today’s end-game;

• PvP -has an established goal and reward system that creates linear progression.  But moment to moment gameplay has far more depth than it did before.  CC, healing, defensive CDs, snares. All of these make the gameplay interesting in a way that the back and forth punch-trading of SWG could never hope to match.  More structure also means more balanced encounters, since at least the number of players will be even during a Battleground.  In SWG it basically came down to who had the most people.  Is that really harder?  I don’t think it is.  I think skill is much more important in an even match than it is in a 50 on 15 zerg.  It is harder to be a good PvPer in modern WoW than it was in SWG.  Maybe not more time consuming, but certainly requires more skill.  When 5 players from each team enter an arena for a fight to the death, there’s little else at play but skill.
• Crafting isn’t really a fulltime end-game pursuit in modern MMOs.  But in SWG though it was compelling, it only really required a commitment to spend the time needed in order to be successful and the persistence to follow through.
• PvE – Much like PvP, this has become far more structured with scripted encounters in instanced environments.  I do not think it is even a fair comparison to compare modern WoW to SWG or EQ, because the PvE content was basically nonexistent in SWG and was basically camping a spawn in EQ.  Instead I will compare modern WoW raids to Vanilla WoW raids.   Vanilla WoW raids were quite heavy on tank and spank fights with a few variations thrown in from time to time.  There was little required of the average player except to dps/heal/tank.  The first fight in Blackwing Lair is a good example of what constituted a complex fight by Vanilla WoW standards.  It required one player to mind control the boss and break eggs, but the other 39 players proceeded as usual.  Modern Normal mode raids require a raider to avoid the fire/acid/tornado/water/cloud, to heal/dps/tank, to at times interrupt, and to manage some type of special mechanic in nearly every fight.  I can think of no fights in tier 15 that could be considered a tank and spank fight.  There is always some special mechanic integral to winning the encounter.  Bump it up to heroic mode and now it is a totally different game when compared to Vanilla.  Heroic modes require peak play from all players, constant movement, skilled execution of fight mechanics.   There is not a single fight from vanilla WoW that comes close to the difficulty of even the simplest of Heroic Mode raid bosses in the Throne of Thunder.  Consider Challenge Mode dungeons.  These are some of the most taxing dungeons I have ever run, requiring me to CC, dps, Heal, and use cooldowns expertly to get the group through.  They also require skillfully timed use of invis pots to circumvent as much trash as you can to hit the unforgiving timer.  There was nothing to rival even the easiest Challenge Mode dungeon in SWG or EQ on shear difficulty.

This is a simple matter of the assumption that if content is accessible, it is also easy.  If content is inaccessible, it is difficult.  This is false.  By this logic, one could simulate the hardcore nature of oldschool play by simply requiring that every time their WoW character levels up they have to stop playing, run around the block, and when they get back read a chapter of A Tale of Two Cities before they can play again.  This is roughly the amount of tedium, additional time consumption, inaccessibility, and punishment that was found in old-school MMO gaming.  It’s a ridiculous idea, I know.  But isn’t it on par with what we used to do?

**Find me one old-school encounter as hard as Heroic Lei Shen and I’ll concede the whole point**

2. Should an MMO be about the journey to max level, not endgame?

This point reminds me of a little game called Star Wars:The Old Republic.  During development they made similar statements about the leveling process being vital and telling  story being important.  Let me ask you though, how long did it take you to hit max level in SWTOR?  (If you bothered) Let’s be very generous and say it took two months on average (which we know it didn’t).  I have played WoW on and off for 8 years.  Let’s assume I would play SWTOR for half that; 4 years. That means the leveling process would take a little over 4% of that time.  What would possess you to focus on something that will only occupy me for the first 4% of my playtime?!!!!!!  This is a ridiculous idea.  Not even old-school MMOs did this.  Their “journey” consisted of a thumb-tack-in-thigh mob grind in groups.  They were as much a race to end game as modern MMOs are.  It just took longer to get there.  Regardless of how long you choose to make your game, players will reach the level cap extremely fast.  You must know this.  Once they do, you have to have something for them to do.  Several somethings, if you’d like to be competitive.  Is this because we players are lazy or lack skill?  No.  It seems this way because again you are equating punishing, time-sink, inaccessible gameplay with challenge.  They are not the same thing. MegaMan is a challenging game.  Waiting for your tax refund is a punishing time-sink.

Who’s to say your “journey” can’t begin at end-game?  In reality, that’s exactly what happens.  Any MMO player knows that the real game begins when you cap level.  To me it begs the questions, why do we even need levels at all?  Why not simply start players at max level?  GW2 does this for PvP. It seems to work out fine.

What innately makes the leveling process more compelling as a journey than end-game?  Nothing really.  I can confidently say that had I been merely leveling this whole time in WoW with no end-game, I would most definately have long since quit the game.  End-game is the truly compelling part of the genre.  That ever growing, ever expanding sense of power and achievement that no arbitrary level number can match, is the reason we play MMOs and the reason we measure our /played in years, not weeks or months.

That’s my perspective anyway.  What’s yours?

>luvbacon<