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MMO Worldbuilding

Mare Kuntz · 2011-05-13T04:15:49

tldr: see next post for invitation to brainstorm fun MMO settings; this post is a big long introduction.Today my friend and I were discussing the topic that we needed a new game we could play together. I said I wanted to start a new MMO, but the last one I tried, Guild Wars, I couldn't get immersed in it because it didn't seem to have much of any story or unique worldbuilding; I didn't get any sense of who my character was in their society, or what my motivation for roleplaying was supposed to be. My friend said he had felt the same way when he tried to play Perfect World - just couldn't invest himself in the game because it didn't grip him. I thought this was interesting because I played Perfect World for 2 or 3 months, so it must have gripped me fairly well until the point where I stopped playing. I thought the Chinese Fantasy feeling was interesting, although it has that unfortunately common over-the-top theme of a world under siege by a dark supernatural army. One of my major motivations in playing PW was to obtain one of the cool mounts that as a noob I saw high level players using in town; also a major motivation for me when I played WoW. Beyond that, I thought the class identities were interesting, and I found some identity in being a crafter, but I agreed that PW didn't have particularly good worldbuilding.Then we discussed Dofus which we had both played for several months - that game is weird because it doesn't really have quests, aside from the tutorial content, much of which was added a long time after the game was created. It does however have a strong humorous character to the world. This character is developed through the description of the classes in the character creation interface, through the goofy flavor text on many items, through the dialogue of NPCs, and through the game's art. An individual character's role in society is developed through their class's personality, their profession choices, their choice in how to build the character by spending stat and skill points (most classes had 2-3 viable builds), and the visible wings indicating one's faction alignment and rank. But overall, the world's theme could have been much better developed, and we would have enjoyed having a lot more story and quests. Myst Uru is another example of a game which manages to be very atmospheric despite having basically no story and quests. A Tale in the Desert almost qualifies here, but it's just so sandboxy and procedurally generated that the locations in the game don't communicate anything; only the appearances of items in the game and the gameplay activities themselves (growing flax, making bricks) really develop the Egyptian atmosphere.Inevitable the conversation turned to WoW. My friend and I agreed that physical locations in the game were evocative and memorable, and the level 1-20 story/quest content for almost all the races was excellent, but above that level it got rapidly worse; quite similar to the pattern seen in Dofus and Perfect World. Also another MMO I played, MapleStory.I also tried Flyff, BrightShadow, Mixmaster, TwoMoons, etc. and I would group these all with Guild wars in having little or no worldbuilding.Conclusion: rather than studying an existing MMO's presentation of story from level 1-max and trying to emulate that, only a few games have any worth studying and it's almost all in the lowest levels of the game. When trying to emulate it, a much better effect could be achieved by modeling one's own level 20-40 and 40-60 content after the 1-20 content of another game, than by modeling it after that game's poorer higher level content. Also, a game world can be communicated to players not just through NPC dialogue and quests, but also through item flavor text, the character creation process, character class/profession/faction development within the game, and the game's visuals.[Edited by - sunandshadow on November 26, 2010 3:48:40 PM]

Writing for Games Game Design

Started by sunandshadow November 26, 2010 01:40 PM

59 comments, last by wolf9891 13 years, 2 months ago

wolf9891

May 13, 2011 04:15 AM

All im dong is giving advice and giving my opinion on how the game community is changing.I wont repeat myself about the 2D games anymore cause i already given you what i thought about it. @the guy above me your comment is kinda pointless and is allowing farther arguments to in-sue.So ill simply say this do what you'd like with your game cause im sure these forums are for taking advice from others.Take what I give advice wise with a grain of salt or not it does not really matter to me not in the slightest.I wish you the best in your game or your idea ? but ya good luck.

Remember if you havent designed a game and are giving advice about sales and saying it requires a lot of money to fund your project and people then your comment does not hold water cause you have not yet sold a game or made one for instance.You repeating this same comment back to me i can simply show you me and my friends sales easily and with no problems.

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🎉 Celebrating 25 Years of GameDev.net! 🎉

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