The &^%*$%^ Rogue!

It's late, you're running instances in World of Warcraft on a 'this is definitely the last one' basis and you're tired. You're a few minutes into your supposed 'last run' and you passingly realise that your group is terrible and you are progressing erratically. If you have the misfortune of being the healer, you realise this fact almost immediately and you have already begun typing:

Healer: Guys be more careful, I can't be bothered wiping.

Rogue: This shit is easy! Pull more tank, l2p healer.

Healer: *Sigh*, okay well whatever. Hold up. Mana break.

Rogue pulls a large group of trash mobs with his bow...

The Warrior died.

The Warlock died.

The Mage died.

You die.

The Rogue vanishes.

Everyone has left the party.

This has happened to you if you have played WoW or perhaps one of its kind. This is not a rage post surrounding the idiocy of the given situation, but more a statement surrounding the evolution of social interaction in gaming. We have hit a junction where computer games could not be more firmly routed into the multiplayer or massively multiplayer realm. Diablo 3 and SWTOR are warnings that the singleplayer game is losing its relevance as both the offline and the online can be one and the same.

The title of this post summarises my thoughts on this. 'The &^%*$%^ Rogue' is something which during my time in World of Warcraft, was said by everyone in intervals of 10-30 minutes. The very mechanisms presented to encourage group play such as random group finders, through their design, destroy social interaction. Living marketplaces are replaced with automated auction houses, the option of a player guild is resdesigned as a requirement unless you prefer to level solo at a disadvantage to your rate of experience gain (never understood that). The game programs you to adopt your fellow player as an assumed hireling to which their inability to play is to be expected and the living and breathing person behind the keyboard an irrelevance. Once at raid level, you are ironically enforced to suddenly become part of a functional community of gamers in which to share countless hours with; is it hardly surprising that given the past 85 levels of indoctrinating players into that of a sociopath, raid guilds now embody the living breathing test-tube of sociopathy they are today?

Elements of the above can be identified across a range of MMO or online games, even back to the earliest online games; one thing stands out in my mind which is truly troublesome and lies at the core of my departure from present and future massively multiplayer games. Healthy player interaction and thriving communities are designed out of games, or at the very least not remotely made welcome. Aslong as the game works as intended and a player can get from A to B to C, content is largely responsible for player retention. Feature genuine human interaction as a driving factor and player retention becomes that much less controllable. Players may quit World of Warcraft, Rift, SWTOR or any number of leading titles for a wealth of reasons, but I guarantee that a wafer thin margin would come as close as to claim it was because of something that a player or group of players influenced within the game itself. Eve Online would represent one of few holding the torch in respects to maintaining anything organic in terms of virtual worlds, although I feel almost ashamed to hold that as the only living example. I highly recommend it, if you enjoy a Kafkaesque learning curve (can I say that? why not).

This is only my opinion and I am happy that the market for MMORPG games has become exponentially enormous, but I consider myself unplugged from the genre. Through the slowest and most painful realisation as I wasted both time and money, it hit me that I had not been 'plugged in' for a number of years, just increasing my 'number of people played with' tally into the hundreds of thousands (kudos to technology, that is still amazing) whilst coming to hate most of them.

For future reference, if anyone quizzes my obsession with 'all that is oldschool' in regards to both offline and online social gaming, this is where I shall send you.

Why did you make my MMORPG so good?

A MMORPG player I am no longer.

Hours spent deep in their literature, news sites and reviews. Hours upon hours in free trials; whole evenings swimming in the oceans of game forums or in torrential arguments with friends concerning combat mechanics, end game content, risk versus reward, balance! I don't think I have truly played an MMO since leaving World of Warcraft a year after it's release. I emerged blind, disenfranchised and confused. I have been but a spectator to the industry since then, a commentator and I have certainly had my share of bitterness.

Unless you haven't already guessed, I have taken it upon myself to share my thoughts on where I stand with our little P2P homes away from home. I welcome you to my first post; my kick starter, and with that in mind I'll offer a wee briefing into my background.

I loved MMORPGs.

See to me the bold sums up a hell of a lot but I suppose I should elaborate. I love virtual worlds. Beginning in 1998 with Ultima Online, a game I still cannot put down for longer than a couple of months, I have traversed the length and breadth of the MMORPG landscape: Star Wars Galaxies, Dark Age of Camelot, Shadowbane, Lineage 2, Anarchy Online, World of Warcraft and Darkfall to name an important few. I'd struggle to find a title which has not experienced my presence in an open beta or trial.

Why do I play? I play MMORPGs to be part of something larger than the game itself; something the players bring to the world and take with them when they leave, something you can't programme. Lets call it the Social Immersion Factor; not through visuals, challenging game mechanics or material or cosmetic incentives, but through the players participation in social interaction which would both define and drive the experience. 10 years of Ultima Online, of which the sum of my character and item progression could be replicated in World of Warcraft in a matter of days. Ultima Online prescribed a brand of content, a quality of immersive social interaction which defined the genre.

Whats changed?

For me? Everything. The genre is, to me, unrecognizable. The state of flux is evident over at MMORPG.com as posters have tried and failed to reach a consensus on a scientific method of stratifying the genre beyond firing the term 'sandbox' and 'themepark' at each other with little to no uniformity in its definition, usage or purpose. MMORPGs have just become mouth dryingly simple, grotesquely polished and mind numbingly rich with content. Player roles are consolidated in all aspects; in purpose, activity and progression in pursuit of clear lines of progression and accomplishment. MMORPG has become SPOG (Single Player Online Game) and this is no more evident than the shift in player retention trends. Blizzard itself admits that 'There are more people that played World of Warcraft but no longer play World of Warcraft than currently play World of Warcraft'. World of Warcraft has 11 million subscribers; a number far exceeding 11 million people have quit World of Warcraft? WoW's steady gains in subscription numbers is a phenomena which can be perfectly encapsulated in a movie moment

MMORPGs did not simply come to the mass market, or expand their market; they changed phenomenally. The shift from long term subscribers to a constant influx of short/mid-term subscribers only denotes the shift in gameplay outcomes, and highlights the contrast from traditional MMORPGs and the core reason why new methods of stratification must me employed before such discussions surrounding these topics become so pointless that the interwebs implode.

Are traditional MMORPGs dead?

To consider that the MMORPG genre had, in its formation, broken away from such linear gameplay outcomes, embracing the presence of hundreds of thousands of participants in creating worlds void of content, but rich with potential for player creation, interaction and innovation. The internet represented an opportunity for players to come together from all over the world to build and enjoy MMORPGs to the full extent of the freedom offered by creativity and technology. Although a far stretch from the playability of the singleplayer titles of the era, such technological shortcomings and impossibilities placed a focus on longitivity, creativity and a reliance on establishing a virtual world of little or no purpose than the player could establish for himself.

In summation?

Why did you make my MMORPG so good? :(

A beginning...

Welcome to Mages IRL, a window I have created to share my quest into roleplaying games and to which I hope will serve as a resource or point of interest to tabletop enthusiasts. My journey begins here as I embark on my mission of becoming a DM in my own right and I hope to share ideas, settings, homebrewisms and subsequent gaming sessions with the blogging community. I am hoping to run both online and tabletop games and will share commentary for each (perhaps even a vlog, technology permitting). Don't feel hurt or betrayed if I throw in my thoughts and opinions on my other interests from time to time!

In the coming days and weeks I will be reviewing the following products as the building blocks in establishing my desired ruleset and brand of gaming. I feel that my desired quality and freedom of interaction between players and DM should come from the most organic place possible and that OSR (Old School Renaissance) games such as OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord & Swords & Wizardry all offer a depth of freedom, breadth of rules and replication of vintage Dungeons & Dragons that I'm really excited to explore. That and the individual 'feel' and atmosphere presented in each of these books is awesome. I'm currently awaiting hardbacks of both Osric and LL, with a digest sized Swords & Wizardry Whitebox in production at a local printers. I may have spoiled myself.

Coming Soon