A long time ago, in a world with trolls, elves, and chain mail bikinis, it became clear over time that people did not play games for the same reasons. Perfectly nice players would get tossed out of guilds for not raiding enough. Terrific players would not be invited to join guilds because they didn’t talk during their probationary period. And of course, the fault was with the player being bounced. He didn’t play the right way. This being one of the earlier MMOs, people took such philosophical differences very… personally.

By "personally," I mean "threats to drive over to your best friend’s house, hauling your mother from that worthy’s bedchamber, and making her sorry she brought you into this world."

As you can see, very little has changed, when it comes to reasonable discussion between gamers of a certain flavor on the internet.

However, the internet gives as well as takes away, and one of the things the internet gave us back then was the Bartle Test. I won’t go into explanations of it, its strengths, or its weaknesses here. Suffice it to say that while crude, your score broadly reflects your play style, and you are most likely to enjoy running in a pack of other people with a similar score.

Since we at GamerDNA are the hosts of this venerable test, we periodically dip into the data bucket to see what patterns and trends may be forming. Here’s the latest snapshot for your enjoyment.

All data was taken in the last 60 days. Also, please note, being a "killer" means your highest score is in the Killer category, and so forth. Incidentally, I had our data man, Steve, run the numbers a second time, to only include people whose top score was at least 10% higher than their second highest score. In other words, these results show the games played by people who were definitely their primary category. While I’m sure there are people who are equal parts, say, "socializer" and "killer," we’re focusing on people who have a strong preference for one over the other three.

TOP FIVE FOR KILLERS:

(I mention killers first because frankly, everyone else will just read the whole article, but killers are more likely to skip the other sections until they find their own, and we’re all about player convenience here.)

1. World of Warcraft
2. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
3. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Multiplayer
4. Guild Wars
5. The Lord of the Rings Online

The spread between the bottom three was negligible, with AOC just ahead. There are nearly twice as many WOW players as AOC, and there were five times as many people playing WOW as LOTRO in this category. Still, seeing LOTRO at all in the Killer category is fascinating, given that this title’s PVP is not widely celebrated.

TOP FIVE FOR ACHIEVERS

1. World of Warcraft
2. Counter-Strike: Source
3. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Multiplayer
4. Pirates of the Burning Sea
5. Guild Wars

This category has the biggest spread – WOW was far and away the top game in this category, with six times as many players as the fifth most popular title – and more than four times as many as the second place title. It’s not even close. If you’re a Bartle achiever, you are almost certainly playing World of Warcraft as your primary game.

I find it fascinating that with such a dominant title, you have a lot more room for surprises in the rest of the top five. I’m not surprised POTBS appears here, as it definitely has a lot of elements that would appeal to the achiever mindset. I’m also not surprised to see not one, but two shooters in the top five list. Again, with one incredibly dominant MMO title, many achievers won’t have time to play more than one – and an easy on, easy off game like a shooter scratches a gaming itch when the gamer doesn’t have several hours to spare.

TOP FIVE FOR EXPLORERS

1. Guild Wars
2. World of Warcraft
3. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Multiplayer
4. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
5. City of Heroes

CoH had the smallest number of people playing out of all the games listed in today’s article. The spread was not as dramatic as it was for killers and achievers, with four times as many people playing the top game as playing the fifth place game.

TOP FIVE FOR SOCIALIZERS

1. World of Warcraft
2. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
3. Guild Wars
4. Counter-Strike: Source
5. Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided

Well, if you’re a socializer, your preference simply isn’t as strong for any particular game. In fact, I’d venture to say that you’re playing whatever your friends are playing. SWG doesn’t even appear in the Top 20 of Achiever games, but it made it to fifth place on your list. The spread in this division is not wide at all, with only six percentage points separating WOW from SWG.

The Bartle Test is very popular among MMO players, so the results are a bit skewed toward MMOs.

But just for fun, Steve ran the numbers for Rock Band. And this was the biggest shocker I’ve had all week. You’d expect Socializers to love this game, right? Closely followed by Achievers?

It’s actually Killers who love Rock Band. They are represented in higher numbers than their percentage of the general population would predict. The other three categories were equal to or below their percentage of the population.

Keep that in mind the next time you think about talking trash at the guy holding the plastic guitar…

If you don’t know what a competitive online role-playing game (CORPG) is, you probably aren’t alone. This is a relatively new type of massive multi-player game that puts players in situations where they either compete with one another or have to cooperate with one another against other players in order to succeed. A CORPG can be either a Player Vs Environment (PVE) model, a Player vs Player (PVP) model, or a combination of both types of game play.

Common Features of A CORPG
While the genre is still early in its evolution both Guild Wars and Fury (mentioned later) seem to be offering some standard features that make the CORPG experience different than the massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) experience.

Game Play
CORPGs combine some of the best aspects of action-based role-playing games, massive multiplayer online games, certain elements from first person shooters (FPS), and competitive multi-player games into a single gaming framework. A player can participate in a CORPG’s story-driven adventure campaign, or in a team-based competitive PVE or PVP gaming format. CORPGs can be thought of in the same way as collectible card games like Magic the Gathering because of the way skills are used during gaming sessions.

CORPGs are less about a player’s level, and more about exploration and achievement in PVE or PVP… By focusing more on achievement titles and rewards, CORPGs provide a wide ranging end game that keeps players engaged.

A player must choose a limited number of skills from the pool of available skills prior to entering PVE or PVP battles, which is similar to assembling decks of Magic the Gathering cards. Players must consider a specific strategy for the area they are entering, or attempt to use a general skill-set up to create synergies between groups of skills. When a team is formed, the strengths and weaknesses of player classes are also usually taken into account, so that players can have the option to create more complex skill combinations.

Co-operative Gameplay
CORPGs generally offer some type of co-operative game play options for PVE and PVP players. Players can explore a game world, kill monsters or players, perform PVE or PVP quests, and complete missions to earn rewards to advance the story or their character. Rewards can include experience points, skills, gold, or items for the player character.

Competitive Gameplay
Player versus Player (PVP) combat in a CORPG, to date, has been offered to players using a consensual and team-based approach. PVP is restricted to special PVP areas of the game world, and there can be a variety of different types of PVP combat. Guild Wars offers their PVP in the Battle Isles, and offers PVP gaming formats that range from one player fighting against one player to competitive guild versus guild type play. Fury is currently on record as providing several types of tournament maps where there will be PVP formats for single players, head to head, and multiple team combat. PVP character progression and rewards have been gaining momentum so that players who don’t want to play PVE content can grow their characters solely through PVP.

Skills
Players in CORPGs can usually select several skills from their primary or secondary character archetypes (commonly known as professions or classes). The skills are displayed in a skill-bar, from where they may be activated by using the keyboard, mouse, or number pad. Skill selection may be freely altered in game outposts or non combat zones, but are fixed once the character enters a PVE adventure zone or competitive PVP arena. There are several types of skills that are available to players. There are attack skills that are used to cause damage, healing skills, and then various defensive or buff type skills to help with survival. Most skills that players can use have a number of counter skills to negate their effects, and this requires the player to select a set of skills based on the type of encounter in which they are likely to find themselves.

The pool of skills available to the player and his characters is initially limited, and access to additional skills is unlocked through progression in the game. In Guild Wars, skills can be captured from slain mobs, PVP combat, or by purchasing skill unlock upgrades from Arena Net. In Fury skills are unlocked through PVP combat trials, and players are awarded points that can be used to buy certain skills.

Builds
In CORPGs, a particular combination of skills, attributes armor and weapons is commonly known as a “build”. Some builds are more effective at particular tasks than others, and so players tend to develop several builds based on their PVE or PVP roles. A build may be at an individual player level, or include all of the roles in a team to utilize skill interactions across multiple players. As the newness of a CORPG wears off, some builds get more popular. Sometimes it is hard or even impossible to get into certain parties without a certain type of build that is optimal for the situation.

A Semi-Persistent World
MMORPG’s provide the gamer with a persistent world type setting. In a true persistent world setting the world keeps on ticking with the player logs out for the day, all the PVP and PVE adventure zones remain open to everyone, player shops keep selling items, etc. Also when players adventure in a persistent world, they are all sharing the same PVE and/or PVP resources. So if someone needs to kill a boss mob for some skill or item, then they pretty much have to stand in line and wait their turn.

In a semi-persistent world, players share several common areas where they can interact with one another, and the rest of the world is played by using game "instances". Instances are temporary game zones that spawn for a player or their group, and do not include any other players who have not been invited into the adventure group. By using instances this helps to reduce the problems associated with spawn camping, mob stealing, item stealing, or other types of annoying player behaviors that are commonly found in persistent worlds.

Travel Around The Game World
One feature that seems to be catching on with CORPGs is the concept of downtime reduction while traveling. Anyone who’s ever played an MMORPG knows that getting to certain adventure zones or battle areas usually entails having to deal with a boring horse ride, griffon ride, or some other horrid combination. The result is that the gamer loses valuable time traveling, and CORPGs have adapted by allowing the player to travel via a world map.

Using map travel, a player simply pulls up their map display, clicks on where they want to go, and then they are instantly teleported to that location. Some games like Guild Wars make you unlock areas of the map by questing before you can gain regular access to the zone, but once you do you never have to wait around to travel again. To a casual gamer the increase in travel efficiency certainly helps them to maximize their game time.

Enter Guild Wars

Guild Wars by NCSoft was the first game designed and marketed as a CORPG. Below is the exact text from one of the public releases about the game.

"Guild Wars is a competitive online role-playing game. Players can engage in cooperative group combat, in single player adventures, or in large head-to-head guild battles. Guild Wars is a mission-based game set in a stunning 3D fantasy world that offers full, integrated support for guilds. Because the team that is developing Guild Wars has had experience creating successful online game series such as Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo, the members are familiar with the complex issues surrounding online games, and are creating a game that’s both easy to learn and compelling to play long term, and yet doesn’t require players to spend hundreds of hours slogging through the preparation just to get to the fun bits."

Guild Wars went on to sell over two million copies, and helped put games based on a CORPG concept on the market. Since the start Guild Wars supported competitive PVP, and has had several tournaments with a grand prize of $100,000 for the global winner. GW supports both PVP and PVE ranked ladders, has a reward system for those that participate, and is planning a sequel to be released in the future. Guild Wars doesn’t require a monthly subscription, and that has helped it to gain popularity from younger gamers.

Enter Fury

Fury is currently in development by Auran Studios and will be the second game to be developed as a CORPG. Unlike Guild Wars, Fury will be based entirely on a game design geared towards those who prefer PVP combat. While the exact marketing hype has yet to be determined, here is what CEO Tony Hillman said recently about the game over on the Gamespot.

"Because we’re not a traditional MMOG. We’re a very new take on the MMOG genre. I’ve just come back from our publishers in the US, and we’ve coined the term PVPMMO.By being really tightly focused on our feature set, and not spreading ourselves too thinly and not trying to be all things to all people, we can find a niche and dominate it. We’ve totally focused on the player versus player experience. So we haven’t had to make any compromises to try and squeeze in any [player-versus-environment] content at all. Everything is balanced for PVP. Every feature that we discuss, we’re not going "hmm, now the PVE guys would like it, but the PVP guys wouldn’t," or vice versa. So by focusing on a simple subset of features, we’re going to really appeal to that audience extremely well."

In Fury, there are a few main types of PVP combat in development:

Team elimination: The winners are the ones that win two out of three rounds. These are pretty fun head to head matches, and could become a great place to arrange matches between guilds.

Vortex: This map is basically a resource race. Your team has to capture crystals, and bring them to your base. The twist is the other team can raid your base and steal all the crystals you have massed. This makes for some interesting offense/defense type action, and the sloppy team can quickly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory if they are not on top of things.

Fortress War: This is a large scale battle of 32vs32 in a conquest to capture nodes and ultimately the fortress. Again this creates a lot of different types of situations for teamwork, and you have to be on top of your game to win.

Bloodbath: This is a big Free For All (FFA) type match where everyone can kill everyone. It is a very fast paced, chaotic, and fun type of PVP. Its also where a lot of new players will learn to PVP in Fury, but it will provide some fun competition on a permament basis.

Fury is currently in a "Pre-Beta" test phase, and scheduled for release in late 07 or early 08.

Concluding Remarks
Few MMORPG’s cater to the casual gamer, and various reports show that casual gamers are the largest segment of online game players. While they may sacrifice some sense of a persistent world, CORPGs provide both the casual and hardcore gamers with a lot of the same fun but without the shackles that make so many MMORPG’s feel like a second full time job.

Due to Guild War’s success, you can expect more CORPG offerings in the years to come. Fury is currently the second known CORPG in development, and Richard Garriot from NCSoft has gone on record as citing that they will publish more games using the model from Guild Wars.

So if a semi-persistent world with competitive or cooperative type game play appeals to you and you don’t have the kind of time to devote to a hardcore MMORPG, then keep an eye on the CORPG gaming genre in the years ahead.

Richard Duffek joined Mythic Entertainment (now EA Mythic) as the Community Coordinator for Warhammer: Age of Reckoning in 2005. In this interview, Richard temporarily sheds his Asbestos Armor of Community Building +50 to talk to PlayerVox about MMORPG design — especially the challenges of PvP and RvR (realm versus realm) conflict.

PlayerVox: What’s the biggest problem in the current MMORPG landscape; and what can designers do to fix this?

Richard Duffek: I think the biggest problem facing the MMORPG genre right now is actually the perception that WoW has created. So many people out there, fans and developers alike, feel that for a game to succeed now it has to do as well as WoW. I spend a lot of time reading various forums around the web and I see it everywhere I go: "How can [Game X] beat WoW?" or "Is [Game Y] the WoW killer?" Why exactly does a game have to beat or kill WoW to be successful? And then the Devs of various companies buy into this mind set. They feel like they either need to have enough subscribers as WoW to be considered a success, or they just want the number of subscribers that WoW has because they want that kind of income. In my opinion a lot of them have forgotten the most important thing; they’re making a game, just make it fun. You don’t need nearly the number of subscribers that WoW has to be successful, but you DO have to make a fun game.

PlayerVox: Why is fantasy such an overwhelmingly dominant genre for MMORPGs, and do you think the market will diversify any time soon?

Most of the games lately that have PvP in them seem like they were designed as PvE games and then PvP was tacked on as an afterthought, or as a result of too many players complaining about it not being included. Richard Duffek: In my opinion fantasy is so market dominating because it’s the safe genre, for both devs and fans. As a player, with fantasy you know what to expect. There will be swords and axes and spells. There will be Goblins and Orcs and Elves and Dwarves usually. Every game throws a minor twist in here and there, but for the most part it generally boils down to the same thing. And for that reason, you’re comfortable there. When you pick up a fantasy themed game off the shelf in your local store, you know what to expect for the most part. A lot of the same things make the genre as appealing to devs as it is to players. They know the players know what to expect from the genre. They know there are certain expectations in place already from their future player base. Those expectations are fairly old and set in stone; it’s easy to meet them.

Science fiction, for example, on the other hand has no such set-in-stone familiarities. It is a wide open, unexplored territory, where few are brave enough to boldly go. So many people expect so many different things from a Sci-Fi title that no matter what you do, a large number of people are going to be let down. If it’s a land-based game they want space flight. If it’s space flight, they want land-based. If you try to do both, it never works out well. One side or the other always ends up lacking. And then you get into the issue of planet types, races, technology, tribbles, etc. There are so many unknown variables out there that for most devs it isn’t worth the risk in comparison to the safety they know in fantasy.

Of course my answer to question one plays into this as well… How many Sci-Fi games do you think we’d see in development right now if Blizzard had gone with World of Starcraft instead of World of Warcraft?

PlayerVox: PVP-heavy MMORPGs have been (or become) the niche players. Is there a large enough market to support a PVP-heavy MMORPG?

Richard Duffek: That entirely depends on your definition of PvP-heavy. I definitely feel that there is a large enough market for a PvP-heavy game using a system like Warhammer does for example; a game where you have both PvE and PvP and they’re integrated well. Most of the games lately that have PvP in them seem like they were designed as PvE games and then PvP was tacked on as an afterthought, or as a result of too many players complaining about it not being included. In my opinion a game can definitely be considered PvP-heavy without that being the only goal of the game, without it being done in a Free-For-All (FFA) manner.

If by PvP-heavy you are indeed referring to a FFA based game, then unfortunately I have to say that they are indeed, and will continue to be, a niche market game. Take me for example, and I don’t believe I’m alone in this opinion by far, I love to PvP… But I’m not always in the mood to PvP. Some times I just want to go solo for a while, or knock out some quests, harvest some materials for crafting, etc. At those times, PvP is the furthest from my mind and the last thing I want is to be ganked. The threat of getting jumped by another PvPer definitely enhances those actions for some people, but I definitely feel that they are a minority. In my opinion most people out there want a definite separation between PvE and PvP.

Any and all employment bias aside, DAoC was my first real love as an MMO because it did such a great job in that aspect. When I wanted to PvP I went out to the Frontiers. When I wasn’t in the mood for PvP I didn’t, and I didn’t have to worry that I would get jumped. While out in the Frontiers you had that "could get jumped at any point" feeling that kept it exciting and fun.

PlayerVox: How do see the interaction between PVE and PVP elements in a game? In other words, how do you see the outcomes of PVP victories impacting the PVE aspects, and vice versa?

Richard Duffek: I definitely feel that is an area that can really be improved upon in the MMORPG genre. I touched on it briefly above. I think in order for a PvP-heavy game to be successful those two aspects need to be integrated a lot better than they have been in the past. But on that same note, they need to be kept separate as well, if that makes any sense.

I think Warhammer will be making large strides in this direction. With the underlying design plan of the game being that "War is everywhere", even when you’re participating in PvE, you feel like you are helping advance the overall PvP effort. If you so choose, you can play the game completely in either PvE or PvP and never worry about the other aspect. But if you take that route, you’re going to miss out on a lot of great content.

In too many games you have to PvE just to be able to effectively PvP, or PvP to get really nice rewards to improve your PvE abilities. In my opinion this is the result of too many devs deciding to make one type of game or the other primarily and tacking the rest onto the end. More people who are making a game, which contains both PvE and PvP, need to get it into their heads that they don’t HAVE to make a great PvP game or HAVE to make a great PvE game. They always seem to focus on one side, which neglects the other.

PlayerVox: Do you feel that players who are mostly interested in the exploration/PVE aspects of a game will be alienated by games with a strong PVP theme?

Richard Duffek: Not if there is adequate separation as mentioned above. As long as they don’t have to fear getting jumped all the time, players will definitely enjoy a game with a strong PvP theme. Of course this is all assuming that there is a PvE based reason for them to play the game. A game like Shadowbane obviously had a heavy PvP theme, and therefore definitely drew the PvP fans. It didn’t however really offer anything to the exploration/PvE minded players, therefore it didn’t attract many. A game like old school Ultima Online did have that draw though. People who had no interest in PvP played the game because of the PvE and exploration it offered, even with the risk of getting ganked.

UO is also a great example of how important that separation is for those types of players. Look how many people jumped ship to the PvE only side once they were given the opportunity. Even though the game had a very heavy PvP theme, they were playing the game for other reasons. Granted I don’t think that would work nearly as well in current times. There are too many other heavy PvE themed games out there for people to play as opposed to trying to PvE on a FFA PvP based game.

PlayerVox: How do you balance making PVP victories meaningful–i.e., provide significant incentive for conflict and victory–while at the same time encouraging the losing side to stick with the game?

Richard Duffek: That’s a tough one. A lot of people out there just aren’t willing to play the underdog role, and as soon as they find themselves in that predicament, they will quickly jump ship to a winning side. In order to make it work, I think you need safeguards in place to prevent one side from completely locking down their opponent. NPC allies that grow in strength over time would be one example, effective population bonuses to under populated sides is another. The key word there obviously is ‘effective’.

PlayerVox: What’s your view on class/skill balance? Is paper-rock-scissors and "the uberclass" the inevitable destiny of any MMORPG?

Richard Duffek: There are a couple problems and misconceptions with balance as far as it relates to a MMORPG. First and foremost, a lot of players out there seem to have this idea that balance is some hard, etched in stone objective, and if the Devs would just do X, Y and Z the game would be balanced. Balance in an MMO is a LOT more fluid than that. Anything you do to one class has a ripple effect through many of the others, and in some cases through the entire game. It isn’t so much like trying to carve a statue out of granite as it is trying to carve one out of water.

The other big problem that exists in the MMORPG community, in regards to balance, is the "me too!" attitude. Any time one class gets any sort of boost, regardless of how underpowered they were before the boost; there is a large portion of the community who starts yelling that their class needs something new now too. It doesn’t matter if they were the most overpowered class in the game; they feel like they deserve something new any time someone else does.

PlayerVox: Beyond being a chat channel for organizing activities, do you believe there’s an opportunity for guilds/clans to become a more vital part of gameplay?

Richard Duffek: Definitely. I think several recent games have taken the first steps in that direction even. Games that allow the guild to level up as a separate entity, taking the individual achievements of its members into account is absolutely a step in that direction. These are only the first small steps, and I feel that this is one of the big areas left for MMORPGs to evolve or grow over time. Guilds have definitely grown and evolved over the years. There are guilds out there that have been around five, seven, even ten plus years. It isn’t just a group of people who tend to group together in a game and like having that shared chat channel anymore. These are online communities that move from game to game together, have gatherings and meet up in real life, etc. I would be honestly shocked if I didn’t see guilds become a more vital part of the MMORPG design in the coming years.

An MMORPG is like a large piece of enterprise software: they consists of databases, specialized servers, client software and a huge amount of content. To begin our journey through the world of an MMORPG, let’s begin with the part that seems most familiar: the content.

Content and 3D Progamming

When people use the term “content” in an MMORPG, they are referring to all of the places, creatures and things you can visit within the virtual world. It includes the actual landscapes, buildings and dungeons you explore; the monsters and players you can see; the graphics for items. Even things like music, sound effects and the special effects used for things like explosions and spells are a type of content.

Very few individuals possess all of the skills necessary to create the large variety of visual effects that are present in an MMORPG. Just as in the film business, where there are graphics programmers, costume designers, makeup artists and miniature modelers (to name just a few), the game business employs a large number of specialized artists who are capable of working on the various sensory components of the game. By the time you see an animated monster inside a game, it is likely that it is the product of several peoples’ work.

Concept Art

The first step in creating a 3D image is to develop what is called the “concept art.” Depending on the game company, this could be as simple as a pencil sketch of the intended creature or building—or could be a sophisticated piece of art, crafted with either traditional media or inside a paint program (Photoshop is popular). The purpose of the concept art is to give the 3D artists a blueprint to follow; it also provides the art director with an opportunity to establish consistent themes across the various art.

3D Modeling

Once the concept art is created, the job of creating a 3D animation begins. The first step is to create a 3D model of the images. There are a large number of 3D modeling programs on the market, but most game companies use either Maya or 3D Studio Max. There are also some specialized products, such as Poser, for designing things such as human figures.

Creating a new model from scratch requires one to build a model from a set of “primitives,” which include objects such as spheres, cylinders, cubes, and so forth. The designer has the ability to attach these objects together, or perform a variety of transformations such as stretching vertices, twisting objects, and so forth. In many cases, a designer will tap into a library of existing models and modify them as appropriate, since creating new models entirely from scratch would take far too long for a project that may easily include hundreds of similar images. Finally, the designer might use another type of product called a “3D sculpting” program (such as Zbrush) to add natural looking features to the model, such as wrinkles or cracks.

The final surface of a 3D image is a set of polygons. The total number polygons in a model is called the “polygon count.” Models with larger number of polygons take longer for your computer to render, because each individual surface has its own texturing and shading. Because a computer game needs to render these models in real-time, the number of polygons is limited to what current computers are able to handle. As of 2007, some of the more advanced computer games in development have 10,000 or more polygons, whereas a model for a Hollywood movie (which has the luxury of rendering all of the images in advance) might have hundreds of thousands or even over a million polygons. Thus, game designers not only have to make models that look good—they have to make models that look good within fairly strict technical limitations.

Texture Mapping

The 3D model might have the shape of the image, but it is still a far cry from the vision laid out by the concept artist. The 3D model needs to be painted, or else it would look like little more than a sculpture.

Often, the people who do the painting of a 3D model are separate from the 3D modelers. These “texture artists” are responsible for creating images that are wrapped onto the 3D model, making them look like they’re supposed to.

In theory, a texture map is just a 2D image that is wrapped onto the geometry of a 3D model—they could be created in any paint program, be it Photoshop or even the paint program that ships with Windows. For textures of reasonably flat surfaces (such as the side of a building, or the bark on a tree), that’s usually adequate. When you need to create a texture map for a more complex object—like an orc or a racecar—artists these days will turn again to products like Zbrush, which allows them to paint directly onto the surface of a 3D solid, rotating and turning the object as if it were a figurine.

Bump Maps

There’s one problem with traditional texture maps: they can look “flat,” especially when applied to flat surfaces. If you remember older video games (or poorly funded current ones), you might have noticed that the cracks on walls look flat, more like decals pasted onto the sides of the surface. That’s because your brain expects things like cracks and creases to be lit differently depending on where you stand, and simply coloring a surface isn’t enough. Modern games use a technology called bump maps.

A bump map is a special type of texture that assigns a height to each pixel, which impacts the way light is received by the surface. For example, a pixel which has a negative height could act like a depression in the surface, swallowing up some of the light that is cast on it. Using bump maps, it is possible to create realistic-looking cracks or bumps in the surface, allowing much greater detail to a surface. This is just one of the ways that modern MMORPGs (and videogames in general) can add detail to an image without resorting to prohibitively complex 3D models. Thus far, very few MMORPG titles are using bump maps, although they’ve become common in modern FPS titles.

Physics and Kinematics

In addition to the visual depiction of a model, the designer also needs to define how the model interacts physically—the kinematics of a model. This includes things like how an arm might move through a sword swing, how a particular weapon is gripped, how an unconscious body might flop onto the ground, how different parts of a skeleton move when you tug on a particular bone, and so forth. The process of defining the skeletal connections in a model and how different objects attach and move each other is called “rigging” the model. Usually, the model designers are the same people who develop the kinematics—but often, the job of animating the complete models within a scene is done by other content creators.

Beyond the individual models, 3D worlds are simulations of physical reality: objects have acceleration and movement. Have you ever had a butterflies-in-the-stomach sensation while watching your character drop off a cliff? That’s because the velocity is accelerating based on Newton’s Law of Gravity, which our brains have evolved to interpret even when we only have visual cues. Many MMORPGs use basic physical rules such as gravity and friction through a fluid (for example, reduced movement while swimming). Some games may offer physics for special environments: Vanguard includes directional water currents in rivers, and Guild Wars has floors with varying coefficients of friction, such as icy surfaces that are hard to gain or lose momentum on. Few MMORPGs as of 2007 have implemented some of the complex physics models that have begun to appear in FPS games: destructible environments, parabolic artillery trajectories, debris that clatters around realistically and objects with realistic weight and density—but these are likely become part of a future generation of MMORPGs.

Animation & Composition

At some point, the content designers will have a rich set of models, objects, buildings, textures and environments to choose from. There’s still quite a bit of work to be done: someone needs to composite it into complete scenes. This means placing objects on the map, creating terrain elevation maps, defining scripts to determine how creatures and players interact with them, etc. In the world of FPS games, this is referred to as “level design,” (there’s no consistent term within MMORPG companies, so I’ll call them the “world designers.”) These people are usually a separate team from the model and texture artists. They’ll work closely with those who have designed the lore and concepts for the world (often, they’ll do much of this definition as well) and integrate the content created by individual artists into the world that players will explore.

A certain amount of animation can be done “by hand,” but nowadays most of the animation that you see characters performing comes from motion capture libraries (called “Mocap” for short). During Mocap, a person wears a suit that is covered with various sensors, lights or markers; they then perform real actions, such as fencing movements, dancing, or everyday activities such as sitting down in a chair. The location of these sensors is tracked, and recorded as a set of coordinates within a computer. These coordinates can then be mapped to the rigging of a model, and used to create a realistic 3D model of a person. Using various animations, combined with transition poses (for example, standing up and doing nothing; or an aggressive combat stance) allows a character to express a wide range of behaviors. Content designers can string these together as part of scenes, define patrol patterns for a creature, or respond emotionally to a conversation. Today, motion capture libraries are available from a number of sources that allows game designers to avoid recreating the same movements over and over—but certain motion capture (for example, a distinctive dance within a game) may still need to be recorded anew.

Particle Effects

Another important area of animation in an MMORPG is called “particle effects.” This includes all the explosions, flashes of light, swirls of color and magic when a spell is cast, smoke plumes, fires, and so forth. These are called “particle effects” because the animation consists of a large number of discrete particles, all of which follow predefined functions that define their trajectory, propagation, noise, color transformations, etc. An MMORPG will need particle effects for many combat actions and spells. Most 3D modeling programs include a particle system, and there are now specialized plug-ins available for things such as fire and liquid effects.

Pixel Art

Beyond all of the 3D art, an MMORPG includes a large amount of 2D art: this runs the gamut from the user interface itself, to things such as all the inventory icons for every item in the game. In the industry, the people who create the 2D art are usually called “pixel artists” because they paint these objects pixel-by-pixel, using a zoom-in tool within a paint program. Sometimes, a 3D program might be used to do an initial rendering of these icons—and some artists may even draw or paint them using traditional media prior to creating a finished version within something like Photoshop. Getting icons and miniature objects to look right is a challenge in that they not only have to look good—but also look memorable and recognizable at a small size. It is a specialized skill, and good pixel artists are usually a different set of people from the model designers and texture artists.

Shaders

Another area of modern graphics programming is what’s called a shader. Video cards now include specialized, programmable hardware that allows a graphics programmer to write custom programs that alter how lighting and color transformations occur on various objects. Originally, these were written in specialized assembly language—but now, programmers can utilize High Level Shader Language (HLSL) to define these operations. What can game developers do with shader programming? One example would be a scintillating color that is mapped to the surface of a magical weapon, complete with a lighting effect that causes the color to radiate onto other nearby objects. Special effects like this are made possible because it is a lot faster for your video card to compute these effects in hardware (within the GPU itself) rather than in the software running in your PC.

When developers talk about shaders, there are generally two types: vertex and pixel shaders. Pixel shaders can do things such as modify the lighting or color properties of an individual pixel, whereas a vertex shader can modify the geometry of an object. Vertex shaders can do effects, such as deforming an object in strange ways, or giving new ways of viewing a scene such as haze or rippling-water effects.

Differences Between FPS and MMORPG 3D

A lot of the what goes into designing a 3D world is the same between MMORPG and FPS games. However, one big difference is the huge number of models and texture maps that exist within an MMORPG as compared to an FPS game. Although many game computers today have more than a gigabyte of RAM, it’s still a challenge to cache the various models and texture maps that a player sees on their screen. In a given fantasy-themed MMORPG, there might be thousands of weapons and armor pieces that a character might wear, and it needs to be possible to quickly render the various appearances of characters regardless of who you might come across.

Client

All of the content ultimately needs to be displayed, and that is one of the jobs of what’s called the client. This includes a 3D engine for rendering the game’s environment, as well as a user interface that allows you to do things like cast spells, shoot guns or manipulate inventory items.

The client talks to the server through a network protocol that consists of “packets” of information such as the location of objects, chat messages, and so forth. The client is responsible for interpreting these packets and displaying the world to the player. Client programs themselves do little or no interpretation of game mechanics in an MMORPG, because doing so opens the door to hacking. Instead, clients are the hands, eyes and ears you use to interact with the servers.

Publishers now invest some effort in making it difficult to modify client programs, to prevent users from hacking them in such a way as to automate activities or grant unfair advantages over other players. However, many modern MMORPGs contain “modding features” that allow users to hook into the client and add their own alterations or extensions in an approved way. For example, World of Warcraft uses a lightweight programming language called Lua that allows players to build their own user interface extensions, but does not offer any methods for fully automating your character.

User Interfaces

The simplest aspect of the client—but often the hardest for developers to get “just right” is the windowed interfaces within a game. This is all of the dialog boxes you interact with for common activities such as moving items around your inventory, assigning hotkeys to actions, etc.

There are two aspects to the creation of the user interface. The first is programming all of the user interface components themselves, and the second is organizing the components into a framework that is easy and fun to use. Although Windows computers come with a library of software that makes it possible to created windowed, mouse-driven interfaces, many games end up writing their own user interfaces from scratch due to the fact that these libraries (a) don’t look enough like a game and (b) don’t work well when combined with a 3D game engine.

It is fairly inefficient, but many games end up rewriting similar things (including basic components, such as slider controls) over and over again. Microsoft has attempted to solve some of this by creating the Windows Presentation Foundation (a feature of the Vista operating system), which makes it possible to use all of the 3D functions available in Direct3D side-by-side with 2D windowing features—however, games that require Vista are still quite far off as of 2007. In the meantime, developing the plumbing that makes possible a game’s unique look-and-feel is an area that can consume considerable development resources.

3D Engine

With the exception of a few 2D or isomorphic MMORPGs, almost every modern game now includes what is called a 3D engine. It is the job of the engine to take the mathematical description of objects, communicate them to your video card, and provide an animated world for you to experience. Most MMORPG companies license a third-party engine, but even then they will frequently need to perform a lot of low-level modifications that can only be done by advanced graphics programmers.

Servers

The servers are the heart of any MMORPG: it is here that all of the rules are interpreted, and all the data on the location and movement of objects is maintained. All of this work must be done within the servers, and not the client, or else unethical players could hack their client software to give them advantages unavailable to others. Most MMORPGs consist of a variety of different servers for providing different parts of the game experience.

Login servers record everyone’s payment information, and act as gateways that allow players to connect to the game servers. After you give your username and password to a login server, your client is given an electronic “admission ticket” that lets your client access all of the other servers that are required during the course of your game.

Game servers control all of the actions within a particular area of the game. These servers enforce all the game rules, activate skills and attacks, and record the location and movement of objects.

The movement of objects is usually recorded as a vector, meaning that motion is recorded as a combination of magnitude and direction—in other words, the server transmits information to all the clients in an area that various objects are moving in a certain direction at a certain velocity. This works better than a system that transmits absolute coordinates (which would look choppy, and require a large increase in bandwidth to update regularly) but it does introduce other issues such as strange animations due to latency: for example, on a laggy connection, you might see a creature walk through a wall and then warp back to its original position. The reason this happens is that the server had told your client that an object would continue on that path, but lag prevented you from getting the further update about the same object stopping or changing direction.

Another job of the server is what’s called “collision detection.” In other words, you need to detect if two objects have intersected with each other: for example, you need to stop when you hit a wall (and some games might not allow creatures or players to pass through each other). The job of collision detection sounds simple in concept, but in implementation it requires a bunch of relatively complex matrix math. The reason is that these are 3D worlds, and determining whether one object in 3D space has intersected with another requires a bit of math to figure out. Precise algorithms are computationally expensive, so most games use an approximation—and even then, only detect a collision after the fact, and move objects back to compensate. Poor collision detection can result in strange problems like the ability to jump through objects that should be impassable, or getting stuck inside terrain.

Because MMORPGs are large worlds, and because it would consume massive amounts of bandwidth to report to every client what happens with every object and event within the world, techniques have been created to divide the world into discrete units (often called “zones”). In games like WoW, this is done by allocating different servers to different areas of the game (such as continents) as well as separate servers for dungeon “instances.” Vanguard, which features a “seamless” world, actually divides the continents into what are called “chunks.” When different servers are used to maintain these different zones, they are often referred to as “zone servers.”

Chat servers provide communication between players. Although players might be connected to different game servers depending on where they are in the virtual world, things such as a guild-chat or instant messaging needs to work across the entire game. To handle this, most MMORPGs are designed so that you connect to a worldwide chat server regardless of where you travel. From a technical standpoint, after you connect to a login server you are then connected to a chat server in the background, and then connected to a game server specific to your location.

Databases record all the information on your character’s statistics and items, and save them in a database so that you can come back to the game at any point in the future. This data is stored in what’s called a relational database management system (RDBMS), the same sort of technology that is used to maintain things like banking information, electronic commerce systems, retail inventory systems, and so forth. Today, software designers can choose between commercial products such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, or open-source options such as MySQL. Implementing a persistence system for a game involves defining a database architecture and then creating software to “wrap” the database for doing things such as saving a character or spawning a new item. It’s critical to design this system well, or the MMORPG will be plagued by item duplication problems, vanishing items or laggy item spawning.

Website integration:

It is becoming increasingly common for MMORPGs to expose some of their content to the World Wide Web. This can be used to provide ladder and player ranking information, character profiles, guild information, and so forth. Adding these capabilities requires a whole other area of expertise. Designers will write server-side code to access the game databases (often using popular Web development frameworks such as php or Java); other developers will create the HTML and graphics used to present a crisp user interface. In addition, many games are now packaging their data so that it can be reused on other people’s websites as well, which means defining data in a language called XML (for extensible markup language).

Patchers

MMORPGs are dynamic, changing games—and software updates happen regularly. As a result, there are patching servers that contain updates to the game code. Depending on the size of a game, this might need to update hundreds of thousands or even millions of clients in a month. Patching servers are simple in concept: they contain all the code needed for a client, and are capable of delivering any of the individual files that have changed since you last updated. However, implementing them to handle the massive demand that occurs around the time of a new patch requires considerable preplanning as well as a significant investment in server infrastructure.

Server Farms

How many computers does an MMORPG require? In 2006, Vivendi reported in SEC disclosures that it maintained over 1,900 servers for WoW. Aside from the software infrastructure, the task of designing and then operating a scalable server farm—with all the security, network and maintenance issues it entails—is a huge job in itself.

Game Design

Even if you have a great 3D environment, fantastic content and animation, a robust and friendly user interface and a server infrastructure that’s ready to support all of it—you still don’t have a game. Creating a good game is well beyond the scope of this article, but to give you a sense of some of the central issues within an MMORPG, the designers need to think about things such as:

What are the objectives? What will give individual players as well as guild organizations goals to keep them interested in playing, month after month?

What are the rewards and challenges? How do you reward the player quickly enough when they first start playing so that they fall in love, but don’t overload them so that they become complacent and bored?

What about the economy? How do you make the economy for money, items or whatever else the game is organized around vital and dynamic? How do you prevent runaway inflation, adequate outlets for spending, marketplaces for exchange?

Lore: how can you make the background of the world, the characters, the plots compelling enough that people will find it interesting? Even if a person is not a traditional roleplayer, there is a certain amount of context, storytelling and emotional content that is vital to an MMORPG. Without it, even the most jaded of players would find the world hollow and difficult to escape to.

Tactics and gameplay: are there enough options so that the player can have a satisfying experience, regardless of how they approach the game? Is it simple enough to learn, but complex enough that it cannot be mastered quickly? Is there enough there that players will be able to have active discussions about strategies and approaches to play?

If you’ve read the above, you’ll be able to think about just a few of the questions that game designers ask themselves when designing an MMORPG (or almost any game).

Quality Assurance (QA) & Testing

MMORPGs are living, breathing entities. Most of them have frequent updates, be it new content or new features. At the same time, MMORPGs are complex pieces of software that rival many of the most advanced enterprise software technologies—and as such, they need significant testing to make sure that updates are ready for use.

Often, players are invited to play on “test servers” before game updates are made live. This is a good final stamp of approval, but there is quite a bit of testing that goes on even before test-server builds are released. One of the major areas of testing that occurs before a game update is released is called regression testing, which is the process that confirms that previously working code still works the way it is supposed to. Regression testing is usually performed by a combination of human testers (people who go down a checklist and confirm that specific actions work as expected) as well as automated testing software (robot-like programs that invoke different operations, and systematically verify various outputs). If you’ve ever gotten a game update, and something that worked fine is suddenly broken, it is a sure sign that the company isn’t investing in good regression-testing. QA Engineers are the people at game companies who design test suites and write test scripts—but don’t automatically blame them just because broken code gets released. These are complex programs with substantial testing needs, and it is often the game company’s decision to underfund QA (an all-too-common choice at many game studios).

Conclusion

MMORPGs are staggeringly complex ventures, involving skills that include a large variety of game designers, storytellers, 3D modelers, 2D artists, animators, user interface designers, graphics programmers, client/server experts, database architects, network gurus, QA engineers and testers.

What does the future hold? As MMORPGs get even more complex, we might start seeing even more exotic jobs. Perhaps we’ll start to see MMORPG companies recruit for “virtual economists” or “physics engine programmers” in the near future—and in an industry as complex and fast-growing as this one, we can expect new innovations to drive even more advanced requirements into the virtual worlds we’ve grown to love. It’s an exciting time to be either a player or a designer!

References

Interplay’s disclosure of MMORPG funding

Vivendi presentation to investors, June 2006

Daniel Dociu homepage and gallery

There is word-of-mouth advertising and word of YOUR mouth advertising. The self-styled regina omnipotens of Section One explains the finer points of the latter in this article about promoting your guild with in-game recruiting.

Guild recruiters cannot be shy. Post in recruiting forums, erect a guild Web site, use in game recruiting tools, such as those in EQ2, these activities all promote your guild and you probably should avail yourself of them. However the fastest, cheapest, easiest most effective way to get new members for your guild is to simply ask in a general chat channel.

Before You Hit the Chat Channels You Need to Know…

…what benefit people will receive by joining your guild and at what cost? Do you provide help with grouping? Do you help people level? Are you a PvP guild? If so what kind of PvP guild? If you provide groups for members is joining guild groups required? If you help people level, is helping other members required? If you are an MMORPG PvP guild, does this mean you don’t do content or that you do organized battlegrounds? .

Once you know the major benefit of joining your guild, create your message around that. Know the cost however, because you’ll need new members to understand that if you want to retain them…more about that in my next article for the blog.

To construct your message take the big focus on your major benefit and combine it with one of two possible actions you want the interested party to take:

1. PST for membership info. Contact you immediately in (PST for Please Send Tell is fairly universal).
   Be prepared to answer questions and potentially talk to multiple people at the same time. I like to either use a text file to cut and paste common answers, or setup macros when available.
2. URL. Save yourself a lot of typing by sending people to a special recruiting page setup in advance. Lazy people won’t take the time to go look however, so if you are zerg recruiting, don’t use this method. Using a Web page is ideal if there is a lot of information for potential members to consider.
   • Present your guild as active and up-to-date. Do NOT send potentials to your inactive guild forums or glommed together site for info. Instead create a special page just for potential new recruits.
   • Get the easiest URL possible. Here’s mine for Section One’s Guild Wars ladder team: http://gw.rpkHQ.com (I manage my domains on Yahoo)
   • GuildCafe group pages have easy URLs http://www.guildcafe.com/group/XYZ and makes a nice recruiting pages.
   • Personal GuildCafe pages also have easy URLs that can be used for recruiting http://www.guildcafe.com/member/YourLoginName
   • Always use the http:// so that people understand it is a web site you want them to look at.

Recruiting Message Samples

Helper PvE guild:

Learn the ropes and level fast with XYZ guild. PST for membership info.

Guild with funny people:

Laugh your way to level 50 with XYZ guild. Casual players welcome. PST for membership info.

Guild with serious PvErs:

XYZ guild seeks pro-PvE members. Do dungeons right with us. Ventrilo required. PST for membership info.

End game looters:

The PvE veterans of XYZ raid guild LFM for teamwork and achieving long term goals. http://www.blahblah.com

Adult social guild:

Like to play and chat? Join the lively world of XYZ guild on Ventrilo. http://www.blahblah.com Not kid friendly.

Crafting guild:

Attention crafters: Join with other crafters in XYZ guild to build an economic powerhouse and rule the server. PST for more info.

Player-killing guild:

Join for the Rep. Stay for the people who’d rather fight than switch. RPK all the way. PST for membership info.

Advertise, but don’t spam

Some old fashioned net-etiquette should be employed while advertising in chat channels:

• Use appropriate channels. Find out what channels are acceptable for guild recruiting. It’s different in every game. For instance, in Guild Wars, one uses the “all” channel. In some MMORPGs the regional chat channels are acceptable. Some games have special recruiting channels.
• Keep it short and sweet. Don’t attempt to explain every membership detail in your message. Things scroll away fast and people don’t have time to deal with long text—heck, they don’t even read quest descriptions most of the time! More on this later.
• Don’t spam. The reason you repeat your message is to give busy people another chance to read it as well present yourself to new people who haven’t seen it. It is not to bore and aggravate people with your endless droning of e-garbage.
  • How often you repeat your message is game dependent. In games like WoW, EQ2 and Vanguard, the number of new people coming into and going out of a channel is small, so repeat sparingly. Observe how frequently others repeat and repeat less than they do. If you get complaints, reduce your frequency even more. Being perceived as spam will get you on people’s ignore-list.
  • In Guild Wars where people hop in and out of districts constantly, your best bet is to move around from place to place, repeat your message once per district then move on, repeating your cycle every five minutes or so.
• Change it up. Vary your message from time to time, test new messages, be clever, entertain. Boring messages equates to a boring guild.

Advertise eloquently…

…or at least avoid looking stupid:

• DON”T USE ALL CAPS.
• Do not load up your message with **l337** >>>symbols<<<and other #$%^& crap. Your potential recruits don’t have time or desire to decipher, so just use plain English.
• Stay away from over-used terms so ubiquitous that they are now meaningless. Ever seen anyone advertising for unfriendly, immature and inactive members? Almost all guilds are friendly, mature and active, so don’t use up precious space talking about it.
• Use goood speeling. You may not care about every day chat spelling and grammar, but nothing makes you look more like a stupid n00b than spamming the same error over and over. Check it first then store it in a macro or text file.

Impress for Success

A poster for a player event in an ancient game.

People want to join guilds that are active. They like to be able to login and find things are happening. One of the best things to do recruiting-wise is put together PUGs, then pitch guild membership to the better players.

You can take this idea a step further by organizing server events and advertising them in spam. Depending on how much creativity the game supports you can do a lot. Character weddings, PvP king of the hill events, PvP tournaments, PvE and PvP raids, crafting fairs, scavenger hunts, races, rigattas and costume contests are all popular.

Conclusion

Don’t be shy! Speak up and use chat to let people know that you’re out there. Be wise with your messages, don’t abuse it, and you’ll be rewarded with plenty of interest.

In future columns, we’ll cover additional ways to promote your guild other than advertising, such as running events, putting together first-rate groups, and generally showing people what you stand for. Stay tuned!

Aaron Smith goes by the handle "Lindorn" and started his MMORPG career with a brief stint in Dark Age of Camelot before moving to his first full-time game, Shadowbane. He has since developed an indepth philosophy on game design. Lindorn embraces player versus player combat and dynamic strategic elements as the central elements behind his enjoyment of MMORPGs. He is the active guild leader of the Dark Carnival gaming community since 2004 and is currently studying film at Brooks Institute of Photography in Southern California.

With World of Warcraft smashing its way onto the MMORPG scene in 2004, the massively multiplayer online world carved itself a place in mainstream entertainment for a long time to come. In January ‘07 Blizzard reported 8 million subscribers for World of Warcraft, and new gamers continue to subscribe every month. A large number of game developers are continuing to enter the market, but few of them offer anything different, and are therefore unlikely to capture a part of a market that now claims over 15 million total subscribers.

Our greatest stories can be traced long ago to a tribal campfire. It wasn’t Homer, Shakespeare or Steven Spielberg that created the heart of these stories—it was all of us.

With Web 2.0 changing the way we think about social communities and online interaction, many a developer’s blog or gaming community forum has touched on the subject of the dynamic world and the future of MMOGs. What is a dynamic world? It builds upon the idea of the persistence of a game such as World of Warcraft, but adds the idea of an evolving environment: they are games that change and can be changed. For many the dynamic game world seems the next logical step in RPG’s. This article will capture the spirit of the dynamic world and give examples of MMORPGs that have followed this path in the past and have enjoyed the most fanatically loyal player bases of any games. It will also explore the pieces of the dynamic world puzzle in all of their digital and social forms, including their ties to human nature. The dynamic world concept holds incredible potential for both gamers and developers alike, carrying with it the promise of immersing players in a long-term and interactive setting by allowing them to both experience and create the content of the game world.

There are varying definitions of the phrase "dynamic world", but it is widely accepted that a dynamic world is a world that changes over time. Even this definition is a little sketchy though, as an instanced dungeon changes over time as well and could be considered part of its respective game world. For this article we will take a dynamic world to mean a persistent, changing game world that all players share simultaneously and continuously. We will address many intricate aspects of dynamic worlds, specifically player interaction and the viability of such interaction from a design standpoint.

The most simplest aspects of a dynamic world are those built into the world itself. A changing weather system (snow, rain, hail, fog, etc), seasons, and constellations and planetary movements are prime examples. Migrating monster spawns or camps also fall into this category. These things and more are examples of dynamism in a virtual world from an environmental standpoint (created by the developers). However, these are entirely the result of developer guidance, rather than player-driven change

We can classify player driven change in a game world in two categories: constructive (the creation of new cities, items and places) and destructive (the overthrow of a city, elimination of a threat, etc.). There have been several MMOG’s in the past that have implemented some of these ideas into their game worlds, and many more that have claimed to have a dynamic world simply to attract more attention. Some examples of virtual worlds with dynamic elements are seen below. Many of the listed games have received a comparatively minor amount of player and developer attention in the past.

Virtual worlds with some dynamic elements:

Ultima Online (Origin) — Allowed players to purchase houses or fortifications (such as towers, forts and castles) and place them on flat land in the game world. Players could create the equivalent of crude towns by placing these structures close together. This effectively created a dynamic element during game play. However players could not destroy the assets of another player, removing any possible "destructive change".

Shadowbane (Wolfpack) — Players could construct their own cities around a "spawn" point called a "tree of life". Cities could be placed nearly anywhere on the map and would be recorded onto a dynamic map of the world that would display information about the cities sphere of influence, population, etc. The tree of life protected the buildings around it from outside destruction, effectively making them immune to attack except during a declared siege. Sieges were initiated with a "bane stone" that would negate the tree of life’s power at a time of the defenders choosing. Players could also place siege engines and wall defenses. Later in Shadowbane’s development a resource system was implemented that placed many mines all over the world that could be controlled by players to collect resources for crafting. A territory control system was also implemented that allowed players to claim pieces of the map under the banner of their guild for certain distinct bonuses and titles.

Star Wars Galaxies (SOE) — The developers introduced player owned cities into the game that contained a function that allowed them to police their own territory, although the implementation changed schizophrenically over time. Initially, a /citywarning command was present that forced outside players to leave the premises under pain of attack. After complaints that these city functions were helping certain factions "choke" vital content areas, the /citywarning aspect was removed, effectively making player cities free ground for all. Instead, SWG relies on its implementation of the factional (Empire vs. Rebel) system. Most Star Wars Galaxies buildings are unassailable (such as player housing, cantinas and the like), but SWG also features factional fortifications such as turrets and bases which will defend against the opposite faction and may also be raided and destroyed by the enemy.

Eve Online (CCP Games) — In Eve online players can claim realms of space as their respective territory and construct player run space stations within the area. Players can also mine resources from asteroids to later use during starship construction.

Second Life (Linden Labs) — The application drew major attention in 2006. Although some claim it does not classify as game due to the lack of any sort of point system, win/loss factor, or "end game" it has attracted a large group of subscription based users. The world is as close to dynamic as a mainstream online application has reached up until this point. Users can add content into the game and even maintain intellectual property rights over it. They can also design and place buildings and develop art through other avenues within the program.

It must be noted that the trend in MMORPG’s has been toward instanced game worlds in recent years, as it solves a number of design snags that developers have had on their plates in previous games. Since the goal of most mainstream MMORPGs has been primarily to focus on in-depth environmental content such as intriguing storylines or epic monster encounters, the idea of a PvE based monolithic (one piece) environment has been discarded. Gaming enthusiast Mike Rozak explains the reason for this:

A monolithic reality doesn’t work well for virtual worlds (in my opinion). The problem was noticed from the very beginning of text MUDs, since in a monolithic reality, if one player changes the world, it remains changed for all players. This means that if a player kills the evil overlord, then for all players thereafter the evil overlord is dead, which is a bit of a bummer for all the other players who wanted their chance at defeating the evil overlord.^[1]

It is here that the reasoning behind the current developer trend toward instancing becomes apparent. It is logical and convenient to fracture the game world in a way that gives all players a shot at immersing themselves in the environmental content of the game. Yet gamers everywhere are crying out for something more; something that they can change and influence. Why hasn’t this been done already? In a game based solely or mostly on built-in environmental content is it possible to have a player driven dynamic from a development standpoint? Cultural historian Timothy Burke touches on the feelings regarding the purely environmental (PvE) aspect of dynamic worlds:

When I’ve ventured out before on this topic, I’ve found a reasonable degree of consensus on this point among scholars, developers and players, that dynamic, changing, responsive synthetic worlds are what we need. I’ve also heard on many occasions that they simply are not technically possible at the present time. ^[2]

Hits like World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, Guild Wars, and Anarchy Online have focused on providing content that appeal to gamers with the use of instancing. Very little of it is player driven content. Why is this? Why haven’t players already been given the ability to manipulate a dynamic world around them and create their own stories? What about player driven politics, economics, and social interaction? The answer lies in the individual psychological and social concepts that surround these ideas. Player driven social dynamics can only exist in certain environments. Some are interdependent concepts that cannot exist in worlds such as those proposed in games like World of Warcraft or Everquest 2 because certain variables are not present. For instance; gamers in virtual worlds like World of Warcraft create social groups or guilds in order to achieve higher rewards and challenges from the environmental "end-game" content Blizzard has implemented with the game. There is no inherent social necessity for players to group together, as the social dynamic within a guild does not affect the game world.

By the elimination of certain "virtual confinements" that inhibit constructive and destructive change in mainstream MMORPG’s, players can create their own content that can have a dramatically different effect on game play. These dynamic implementations create an immersive aspect as well that is different than many mainstream MMORPG’s. If players are granted a degree of authority over their environment, their virtues and vices will create conflict as they come in contact with one another. Whether this be a political, military, or social dynamic; players will experience a psychological immersion within the game because they have invested their own emotions and labors into the environment that they play in. This is an important concept for developers and gamers alike. Mathew Mihaly, president of game-developer Achaea LLC, has stated:

Politics allow you to provide players with two very important, positive feelings: a sense of attainment, and a sense of ownership and control over their environment. By giving players methods by which to advance in a political hierarchy, provided there are rewards attached, you give players the important feeling of achievement as they climb the ladder of success. Further, as players gain power in your world, they begin the transformation from guest to owner (at least in their minds, and that is what is important).^[3]

This illustrates a primary reason that dynamic worlds are so immersive and compelling. Players become committed to these designs because of the ownership they have in the game world. The concept of player ownership may seem fleeting in some regard, but it is an emotional investment by the player that has long lasting implications. It is important to understand as well that player ownership and politics in a dynamic world go hand in hand with economics. You can’t have a sense of attainment, ownership, or control without something that players can attain, own, or control. Whether it be currency, territory, fame, glory, respect, or items; the economic concept of scarcity will be the driving force behind player action in a virtual world. There will never be enough material or emotional satisfaction to go around, which will bring people together socially in order to better accomplish their goals. Clay Shirky; an adjunct professor in NYU’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program states it simply:

How to build a Nomic [realistic] world? Start with economics.^[4]

One could argue that a socio-political dynamic exists in mainstream MMORPGs simply because within the individual guild there is a form of economic scarcity. The guild itself and its political qualities exist for the cooperative acquisition of materials and completion of activities that require a group. The guild provides access to these materials in return for a player’s participation. However, from an "extra-guild" perspective, social politics do not really exist on a community-wide level in such a world for one simple reason: the absence of scarcity on a worldwide basis. While scarcity of resources (items, respect, material) may exist within each guild, each guild has unlimited access to the resources of that world.

If any guild can enter an instance and kill an epic monster, then from an overall standpoint economic scarcity has ceased to have an impact on the social dynamic between separate guilds. Since scarcity is going to be the driving force in social interaction between individuals and guilds, there must be an overall factor of economic scarcity in order to have a dynamic and immersive political system that affects everyone within a game world. Now some might argue that material scarcity is not the only motivating social factor on this subject, but it must be noted that scarcity can exist in the form of things like glory and respect as well. Regardless, it is an easily seen fact that a large portion of the lasting appeal of most mainstream MMORPG’s lies in the acquisition of virtual materials and proverbial "tokens of achievement". Colleen Malone of Peace Magazine references the research of Dr. Homer Dixon, one of the leading authorities in the field of modern economics:

The research shows that renewable resource scarcities can produce civil conflict, instability, large and destabilizing population movements, aggravated racial, ethnic, or religious tensions, and debilitated political and social institutions. According to Homer-Dixon, the role of environmental scarcity in contributing causally to conflict is often downplayed or ignored entirely.^[5]

What does all of this babble about economics and politics really mean for our dynamic world? In order for a player-driven social dynamic to have an impact on the game world, there needs to be a persistent world with no instancing. These concepts create a kind of intrigue that is not present in MMORPG’s in the mainstream. With players having ownership over pieces of their virtual world, they will have a psychological interest in maintaining those assets. But that isn’t the only variable that creates immersion in these types of games.

In order for players to willfully interact with each other politically, diplomatically, or otherwise on a "global" scale, some form of competition will have to be present. Take two real world countries for example; you have a world population existing on scarce resources that has created a social network of international politics in order to exist in a mutually beneficial environment. When they cannot do so, war ensues. This is where we have to use a dirty phrase. That’s right… player versus player. PvP isn’t the only way to create competition in our dynamic world, but it’s the easiest. Creating a PvE world with the possibility of competition among players is possible, but requires a massive amount of content on the development end such as NPCs that can organize attacks and adapt to player politics.

Enabling an environment in which players can freely kill each other has been done to different degrees in the past. Games like Shadowbane and Lineage II both had what could be considered "open PvP" systems. However, Lineage II had tight rules on PvP that would flag a player with harsh penalties in certain situations if they got "out of hand" whereas Shadowbane had none of these restrictions. Both worlds had strong points, but it must be noted that the player versus player aspect added to these games forced the gamers to take their personal and guild politics seriously. This added meaningfulness that led to greater interest and immersion in the game world.

Along with the economic and social motivations discussed earlier, there lies another immersion factor: the threat of violence (PvP). Without the threat of violence the dynamic world’s politics and economics will seem pointless in many respects. The threat of PvP combat will cause organizations to form, people to cooperate, and player guilds to take each other seriously so that politics and economics will maintain realism. This spice causes players to want to log on every day just as the hope of attaining wealth and property within the game world will do the same on the other side of the "hedonistic spectrum" Player ownership is more important if there is a chance of loss. This doesn’t necessarily mean loss of assets or items. It can mean loss of face, loss of prestige or honor as well. This conflict creates an intriguing storyline and gives meaning to what the players do in our world. However, our dynamic world is still meant to please the player. And while many players are willing to risk their ownership in the dynamic world in exchange for more political and economic immersion, other players see the gaming world from a different perspective. Some gamers desire a world in which there is no true loss. Even if an attempt against monsters in an epic PvE encounter is lost, the players will walk away with everything they own still in tact and they’ll just have to try again later. For many players gaming is an escape from the risk that accompanies any action in real life and they would like their work in the game to be preserved indefinitely whether it be assets or items.

Past RPG Developers have often used items of great power as the main drive or attraction within their games. The removal of items as a major force in these games might draw more people to a fully dynamic world that contains an open PvP environment. "Loot" needs to be a powerful and important factor in games like World of Warcraft because it is so valuable that players will strive for long periods of time to attain it, constantly developing their avatars and keeping them interested in the game’s content—but in a player-driven dynamic world, the emphasis shifts to the evolution of the drama around the characters and organizations within the game’s story. In such a game, there is no longer need for loot of incredible value. One approach is to implement a "full-loot system". A full loot system is something rather contrary to most games on the market today. While many players would be repulsed by the sheer thought, such a system could take the focus off of the constant struggle for new items and place it on more immersive environmental and player content. In a world of governments, kingdoms, militaries, alliances, betrayals, stealth, and intrigue there is no necessity in powerful items that drastically alter the course of conflict. Many players after having experienced MMORPGs are looking to developers to usher in this new kind of content and depart from the traditional item or experience "grind" that is so common in today’s games.

The dynamic world embodies the concepts that will become the future of MMORPGs. As the Internet and gaming communities continue to grow, gamers are taking an increasing interest in plugging the community itself into the game world in such a way that everyone can experience a world that follows one rule: what you do means something. Meaning is what everyone searches for in everything they do and is exactly where the spirit of all these details becomes apparent. Meaning enthralls and grabs us. It holds us to our seats and doesn’t let go. For thousands of years mankind has used the ideas of conflict and emotional attachment in stories to move us and compel us. In more recent years, radio, movies, and television have done the same on a global scale.

The gaming industry has an advantage other venues do not: interaction. The most interesting worlds that lay before us will be the ones that respond to everything the player does and that all players and guilds can build in their own image. Our greatest stories can be traced long ago to a tribal campfire. It wasn’t Homer, Shakespeare or Steven Spielberg that created the heart of these stories—it was all of us.

References

[1] Mike Rozak. "Fractured Reality." Sept. 13, 2005

[2] Timothy Burke. "World Persistence: One In A Series of Queries." Terra Nova Feb-02 2006

[3] Matthew Mihaly. "Constructive Politics in a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game." Gamasutra March 2000

[4] Clay Shirky. "Nomic World: By the players, for the players"

[5] Colleen Malone, "Scarcity and Conflict: Homer-Dixon’s Findings." Peace Magazine Jul-Aug 1996: p. 13