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While I was working on Auto Assault, before the game had gone into any sort of public testing at all, the number one thing people talking about the game would ask for was a way to change the world. It seemed like everyone and their guild wanted to be able to see the impact of their presence in the world and to see themselves changing the world in some way. As MMO fans ourselves, most of the team felt the same way and so we struggled to find a way to do it.

I think it was Scorch, but I don't honestly remember, who came up with the idea of using instances to do this. The basic idea was that you would visit an instance more than once, and each successive visit would track the changes from the previous visit. So, for example, if you entered a canyon instance and the first time it had a Pike Camp and some Zendig slaves in it, then after freeing the slaves and destroying the camp, you would find smoldering ruins and the corpses of dead Pikes the next time, and so on. This way the world seems to evolve around you. If the missions your taking at the time all show that same memory, then the world is one coherent narrative, giving players playing solo an experience akin to a single player RPG in some small way.

We thought about it for awhile and we decided we'd try it. We figured players would want other ways to do things publicly, but we didn't have any capability to do that back then, so this seemed like a good compromise. We wrapped our mission design and world design around the concept and set to work making it happen.

So, flash forward to the release of AA and you find me trawling the forums looking to see what people have to say about it. With a few standout exceptions, hardly anyone had spoken about it in beta, so I was curious to know if players had noticed and what they thought of the way we used instances. I searched the forums and still nothing... until a post about "boss farming" caught my eye.

I read the post and recoiled in horror - The poster was essentially saying "This changing the world shit broke my MMO experience." His premise was that the game was bugged because most of the bosses weren't in the instance the next time you visited it. Essentially, he wanted the "Pirates of the Caribbean" experience - he wanted to ride the rescue the Zendigs from the Pikes ride again, but when he tried he got the shitty sequel instead and it pissed him off. He wanted to use the bosses as a way to grind and we had taken that away from him. (Well, some of us did; some of us relented and implemented farmable bosses, which only made things worse.) Yet, despite my horror I had to admit that I found it sort of funny. You see, this type of thing happens to MMO developers a lot.

Every MMO team tries - or at least thinks they try - to break the MMO paradigm and offer something new to the players, but usually this backfires. Think of the honor system in WoW (some like it, but many do not) or player driven content in Jumpgate, both were good systems but they caused negative game experiences for players for various reasons (the amount of work require to attain rank in WoW and the diminishing player base slowing down content consumption world-wide in Jumpgate). The lesson most Devs take away from this is, "Whoops, we didn't understand what they wanted; we made a mistake." But maybe there's another message to be learned? Maybe it's, "Players Expectations conflict with their Desires."

Perhaps what players want is so different from what they expect that when they see it they sort of panic and reject it out of hand. Maybe changing the MMO paradigm has to happen on both sides of the industry. Maybe the Devs and the players both have to change to see any major evolution in the MMO industry.

Why we haven't, yet - The Fallacies of the MMO Industry
There are a lot of reasons why we haven't seen any major evolution of the MMO genre (or perhaps I should say viable evolutions). Many have been eloquently spoken to all across the web by many self-proclaimed experts on the MMO industry.

OK, I should probably mention that I've only worked on one MMO. The one I worked on was marginally unconventional, so please don't consider me an expert in the field or anything. I actually hate that about the MMO sector of the industry - the designers who, after having worked on only a single MMO, suddenly stand up and preach to you as if they know everything there is to know about the MMO genre, its players and how to succeed.

This actually brings me to the first Fallacy of the MMO Industry, so I'm just going to jump right in.

Fallacy 1 - The (Dev or Player) knows what's best, they're the experts.
The thing about pioneering something new is that it's new; no one knows what's best because no one has seen it, yet. Sadly, you see this a lot all over the industry. On the one side you have arrogant, self-important MMO Devs who couldn't be bothered to listen to players because they're not "pros" and on the other you have meek, callow MMO Devs who are so afraid their players will flee their game that they will do anything their players demand, no matter how outrageous.

Is it any surprise to you readers that the most successful MMOs are run by people somewhere in the middle of that spectrum? Players often site the wrong cause to the effect that irritates them and Devs often overlook legitimate issues simply because they disagree with the players. In other words, neither group is right 100% of the time. Both sides of the industry need to recognize that.

Fallacy 2 - It's easier to do it this way, so your way must be wrong.
You ever play Resident Evil? Don't you hate how you can't move and shoot at the same time? Even when you're playing a cop? I did, couldn't stand it... But at the same time, it's obvious why the Capcom folks decided to do it this way. If you could run and shoot, the zombies wouldn't be nearly as dangerous, would they? If the zombies weren't so dangerous, the game wouldn't be very scary, would it?

The guys at Capcom also made Dead Rising, a survival horror game where you can run and shoot and generally be way more active than you could in past games (such as Resident Evil). It was fun; I like it a lot in fact... However, it's not really scary, at all. So, it is a very enjoyable game, but no Resident Evil. I happen to like it more, but the reality is that either method - restricting the player to enhance tension or freeing the player up to enhance action - is perfectly valid.

In MMOs, we tend to forget that "different," "harder" and "worse" do not share the same definition in a dictionary. Both sides of the industry are guilty of this. For Devs, this means falling back on a solution that already exists because it takes less work. This most recently expresses itself in this quote, "That's how they did it in WoW." For Players, this means pushing for changes that make the game easier such as asking for increased XP pay outs so they level more quickly or nerfing some element of the AI that is kicking everyone's ass, etc.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that these changes aren't sometimes justified, what I'm saying instead is that we often push like this without considering whether the change is better for the game or for us, personally. Will making my game easier really make it better, or will I make it more boring just so I can have an easier time fighting Obnoxia, again? Will falling back on the way WoW did it really make my game better, or will I make it hard for my game to stand out from the crowd just to save me a few extra days of work?

Fallacy 3 - It's my game!
You'll note in the last section of the previous fallacy that I used the phrase "my game" - that's telling, isn't it? Perhaps the most unfortunate reason we never see any real change in the MMO paradigm is that we are simply too attached to our games.

As Devs, we play an MMO and we think about how we can make it better. Over the years all of these ideas sort of crystallize into an MMO design, or they filter into your work. It's your game, after all, so you're not going to make the same mistakes those other Devs made. No way, not you. So what you do instead is make the exact same game, only with the problems you spotted corrected, and the ones you didn't see still outstanding.

As Players, we play an MMO and we think of it as our newest toy, or escape, or diversion. We fail to remember that we don't own this world, we're not even citizens - we're tourists with long duration visas. In many of these worlds we're afforded a say in how things progress, or how the game evolves, but in most we're really not. Oh, the Devs - the real citizens, they'll let you talk, but most of them don't listen. Maybe they don't listen because they don't fell you're entitled? That would be irritating, wouldn't it?

And that's the problem... Why shouldn't I have a say in how the world I pay to access evolves? Why wouldn't I be entitled? Well, the Devs own the world, or their publisher does, so technically you really aren't entitled, but the real problem isn't who should or shouldn't say what, it's why can't both sides agree they both own the damned thing?

Why can't we share? Why are there these ownership issues between Dev and player, between Artist and Consumer? I guess it's because ownership was undisputed in the older entertainment media. The troupe owned the play; I just paid to see them play it, etc. But, MMOs are something new, an interactive medium. Whether we realize it or not, players and Devs interact with each other in a sort of metagame of their own. We are working cooperatively every day. I play and my time and my stats are logged, my actions recorded and the rolls of the dice are stored. These are analyzed on the back end so that the design team can spot hacks, bugs, exploitable balancing issues, etc. This analysis then causes the rest of the team to make changes, fixes, nerfs and buffs for the next patch. That's one turn in the game Devs and Players play as an MMO evolves: Players move, Devs respond, turn ends.

So, since we're playing together anyway, shouldn't we try to cooperate so we can enjoy the result more on both ends? Shouldn't the Devs be actively working in the forums to communicate with the community? Shouldn't the community be organized, constructive, clear and in consensus when it communicates with the Devs?

Isn't the best way to change the world(s) we interact in to abandon the fallacies that prevented us from changing so that we can work together to make something really great? Imagine how easy it would be for a team to make a good game great if they had a good community supporting them. Imagine how good the game could be.

How's the proverb go? "Many hands make light work."

Of course, you could as easily say, "the IQ of a mob is inversely proportional to its size" so remember: You can't change the paradigm if you're complacently living it.

Challenge Assumptions.

Take Risks.

Be Excellent to each other.

- Snipehunter