Ideas about MMORPG

    Nowadays MMORPG(Massively Multiplayer On-line RPG) has been limited by nowadays technology. What’s the advantage of MMORPG? The answer should be interaction. Unfortunately, this poor interaction is between players and players rather than players and game. That is, game can not be changed in the manner of players, however game’s designer can publish patch to improve game content. Why players can not interact with game? The reason is: players change game may crash game itself. Because game is a model of real world, the things has been lacked is important to preserve this world in game, in some situation. So we have to limiting players’ behavior, they just interact with themselves, not the world! In recent year, some games improved this issue, like EVE. But this improvement is built on a situation in which lacking many content of game. In a word, it constructs a rule and let players to play on that rule. The contents should be offered by game has gone.

    Maybe a property can be observed: players freedom and the content offered by game is in inverse ratio. Content means the role played by computer in that world, for example: a NPC interact with players, that NPC can be called content. Traditional RPG has excellent content (story), but freedom is not good, because generally you must be a hero and if you don’t do what the game supposed you will never complete that game. MMORPG has poorly content, even it has one, every players got the same content. That is, content can not change, NPC told players same words. Freedom is also not good, in fact, corresponding to traditional RPG, the freedom has not improved. in MMORPG, we have freedom without objective. Players don’t know what’s the significance existing in that game. Because kill monster, got experience or better equipment is not significance. Player has been discarded.

    Is there a method to making a game world to be vivid? I think the most important thing is making the world to be event-driving. We tell stories by events. Event can be paralleled. Game designer plant a seed and let it grow by emergence! What is event? In LOR, the appearance of that ring is an event. At another hand, we can’t and impossible to prepare the scene for that event. We hope it can utilize existing world elements. Change the content carrier is also very important. In a REAL world, a people (may be a NPC) says the same words to every people is not allowed. But without NPC, how to transfer the world view, or story simply, to players? If we don’t do this job, players have to be play with themselves. In this situation, MMORPG is somewhat like a CS-like game, and I feel eve is exactly this game.

   

    How to do this? More important, how to manage this in order to avoid event termination or event crash the world? Let game manager to intervene in is not a good idea. Because it is unnatural and there is no proof that things he did is correct. I think a event-driving MMORPG is a chaos system. It is hard to deal with. Regardless of this idea, there is a practice problem: we can not allow the codes to be increased too much, or else it will be an impossible project. Even we finished, bugs effect in this world can result in serious outcomes because players have not be limited corresponding to traditional MMORPG.