The struggle to create a good online RPG grapples with a couple of conceptual
problems.

This argument works from the assumption that the appeal of a story setting
is what draws players, whatever the intensity of their engagement in the
game story may be.

The need to have an enjoyable playing dynamic within the interface and social
mechanics of the game, balanced against an interesting and immersive storyline.

Consistently, online worlds are plagued by a problem of differing levels of
interest game players have for one side or the other of this balance.

Some players are happy to pursue levels and loot perhaps because the storyline
is too shallow, or doesn’t hold their attention.

Providing a fun and challenging environment without taking the game or oneself
too seriously is complaint of the other portion of the playing population.

Some players are keenly interested in the story setting of an Online MMORPG,
but are frustrated by the levelling treadmill, and the crass disinterest
other players may have in engaging and maintaining the fantasy setting.

I have played RPGs, of the computer and paper and dice variety, MUDs
and MMORPGs both as player and game-master, as player, admin, and
level-area maker.

MMORPGs aim to incorporate elements of mythic literature and the thrill of
modern mass communication. The actual combination of the elements is part
of the perennial human fixation with drama and story telling.

Drama is the universal form of human entertainment, played out in different
mediums, musical, lyrical, and visual. Drama is also social consciousness.

Drama in both its classical and modern context represents attempts by people,
both individuals and groups to communicate some idea or context to the larger
social body, both for edification and entertainment.

In a very primitive sense, drama is the universal human language, describing
scenes of adventure, comedy or tragedy as the experience to be communicated
usual a palette of words, music, and imagery to tell a story.

Drama however in order to have maximum appeal has certain constraints, that
are inherent to its effectiveness. Since mortality is one of the key defining
aspects to human experience, it follows that most drama uses mortality as a
fulcrum to catapult a story into the audience.

Death creates intensity, and is something we all face in various ways great
and small throughout our lives. Characters both villanous and heroic must
suffer and die in order for a plot to be told, or even a point to be made.

The whole human equation plays out against the rule of mortality. In both
economics and morality, the ‘value’ of a thing, all have to do with it’s brief
and finite nature.

The experience of playing paper and dice RPGs was enhanced by the permanent
nature many of its games took, once your character died, guess what. “You gotta
roll a new character”. For some a nuisance, for others the ‘point’ of the game.

The idea of character itself is based also on the finite nature of ‘personal
identity’. Character is often thought of in retrospect.

The suspension of mortality common to most RPGs today totally dilutes the sense
of character and story, the whole process of ‘retrospect’ and results in creating
an endlessly inflationary system of levels and loot, where character becomes
meaningless, and players are defined by what levels and loot they possess, not
by the adventures, heroic, mean, comical or tragic that they engaged in.

Some common arguments why people would never play a permanent death game:

(I will address these each with a suggestion for the handling, not to say that
my approach is the definitive correct one, but to show that the problem itself
is really a conceptual limit, that a variety of approaches could address.)

“Who would want to play a game where they lose a character they labored over
for months who died because of lag, or a bug. ?”

There are a few iterations of this argument, essentially devolving around
the idea that once your character dies you loose your hard earned effort
to make that character successful.

There are a couple of relevant parts to this question, that need to be dealt
with in turn.

1) What is the nature of a ’successful character’

-Levels and loot ?

-Interesting quests completed ?

-Active involvement in an online guild/group ?

The question of levels and loot have a couple of aspects that could
be addressed. Firstly is that currently level and loot are inflationary
and need to be balanced. A system of more realistic difficulty could
mean a game of fewer levels, that are more significant, or no ‘levels’
at all, merely ’skill ranks’.

The benefits of level and loot could be attributed to an account, not
merely to a character. In effect, one could have a character that
attains levels and loot, some of the benefits of which are inherited by
other ‘characters’ created on an account.

Inheritance or allegiance systems could allow for a distribution of
accrued benefits of play that could be lost through character death.

An ‘account karma’ system could be used to award accounts based on
playing style, group association, quests completed. Karmic accounts
could also affect the type of characters that can be created by that
account, good, evil, legendary type character classes, inherited
skill bonuses, or items, etc.

2) Dying ‘permanently ‘ could result from accidental forces, lag, bugs,
griefing, player misadventure (Leeroy Jenkins), and alienate the player
base.

An admin based arbitration could be present to resolve accidental
death issues and grant ‘intervention’ to save the character.
In game mechanisms, whether player based, or AI could handle
events that would count as ‘intervention’, such as healing, resurrecting
etc.

Account karma and NPC/PC justice code can be an answer to the
problem of griefing, with bounties placed on the heads of griefing
characters, and a karmic ‘debt’ attributed to their accounts for actions
towards players and NPC’s.

With regard to the ‘physics’ of ‘health’ in game terms, these are skewed
by the inflationary levelling system of difficulties of current MMORPGs
and require very specific limitations on combat. Health and hitpoints,
mortal injury, death (of the temporary respawning variety), all occur on
a collapsed timeline. Mortal injuring and dying in most cases is actually
a slower process, often allowing for some type of intervention (health care)
to occur.

In games driven by level inflation MOB/NPC difficulty is driven by a need to
challenge super powerful characters. The experience of having your 7 foot
tall, 350 pound, claymore wielding barbarian warrior cut down in his prime by
rabid squirrels is not uncommon in contemporary MMORPGs.

Creature difficulty could be handled differently, allowing for hunting and
adventuring with a different level of risk. A risk that would be felt all the
more acutely given the possibility that the character could ‘die’. This
‘acuity’ itself however potentially adds great interest to the game.

Many MMORPG’s today offer Epic and visually rich settings sparsely
populated by story elements, but with a superabundance of XP and
loot generating ‘mobs’. This particular unbalance is necessary due
to the xp and level mechanics of the game, requiring lots of creatures
for exploring PC’s to kill and loot. However that same constant and
overwhelming abundance of monsters undermines any presence of
meaningful dramatic story, becoming instead a shooting gallery in
which the attention of bored players requires constant additions of
loot to maintain interest.

Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’ talks about the need for risk and loss in order to add
intensity to a story. An audience seeing a sympathetic character die is
saddened, and becomes more focussed on the story outcome, hoping for
the preservation of other sympathetic characters and story elements.

Heros must suffer in order for their ‘heroic character’ to show, stories must
involve a real sense of loss in order for an audience to show interest in the
story, that loss has to be in terms ‘people’ can feel, or relate to.

The locale in which a player acts, and the need for their participation in the
storyline must be framed in terms of suffering, loss and danger. There has
to be some normalcy for players to relate to, and that normalcy endangered
provides the basis for the dramatic tension.

But getting back to the idea of character meaning, and storytelling even in
the current MMORPG context, the ‘Leeroy Jenkins’ story illustrates my point.
Stupid and ridiculous as the episode was, it actually became a story worth
telling, watching and referring to. It become for a time, an idiom of a the
MMORPG culture.

One of the other problems of current MMORPG worlds is repetitive events.
This is a problem of game mechanics, and the constraints of creativity.
Real stories have to have a timeline in order to be meaningful. Systems
where the game ‘counts’ to an arbitrary number and resets, respawning
items and creatures, leech interest and undermine any actual storytelling
since the repetitiveness itself becomes predictable and comical.

Having a believable timeline is possible. Games, and stories often operate
on a collapsed time line, where 1 second of real world time, is 1 minute,
one hour, or one day of game time. Creating a storyline that in broad
strokes plays out over 5000 years, could be done with a game that in play
time would require 5-10 years for that particular epochal storyline to
complete.

This would create a world in which the sense of mortality is added to by
time. Characters would age and die, making their impact brief, but more
intently meaningful. A characters ‘individual’ level would be less relevant
than a persons involvement in a series of characters and storylines
throughout the game world.

Common objections to this are:

-”People playing from different timezones could miss out on events.”

Aside from the fact that this is already the case in repetitive and
inflationary MMORPG’s, there are a few interesting possibilities this
question raises.

1) The question of a persistent timeline, and character persistence
along the span of an individual characters mortality.

A persistent timelime would mean that everyone at some time would
miss out at some points, this could potentially create an online
atmosphere where people (PC/NPC’s) talk and have interest in the
actual online events that occurred in previous sessions, hence adding
to character and story.

2) The notion of one-time events occuring along an extended timeline.

There is no better way to make an event meaningless, than to put it
on a repeat timer, eventually the story, the reason for the event, or
NPC becomes irrelevant, the only thing generating interest is what the
event or NPC ‘drops’, and its subsequent ‘uber’ value in the inflated
playing economy.

3) The question of offline playing.

A number of MMORPG’s have handled offline playing excellently.
Learning and maintenance tasks are selected, and the person logs
in to see the outcome of said tasks, learning etc. And continues
with those task and skill trees in game. With the obvious benefit
of in game learning being somewhat accelerated in comparison.

One of the most meaningful objections to the argument of a persistent
timeline, story rich world is:

“It could never be done, having a environment that is continually
new and interesting would require enormous AI.”

This objection boil down to two areas.

1) The AI portion of dialogue and story creation.
2) Handline and creation of new and interesting content.

AI handling can be done in a variety of ways, from creator-maker
mobs that build, craft, sell and perform a variety of NPC functions.

AI dialogue can be scripted and automated with writers and actors
taking the part of screenwriters and directors, staging NPC dialogue
against the timeline plotline of a particular area. That level of writing
combined with generic social dialoge and emote content is in large
part responsible for creating the story, and is not much different that
any storytelling effort.

Forbes magazine ran an article a few years ago which suggested
large MMORPG game worlds with paid actors fulfilling the role(s) of
a variety of aspects of a game from significant/insignificant NPC
dialogue (think puppeteering) a few dozen NPCs. Volunteer and
paid writers and content creators contributing to the ongoing storyline,
providing a base for paid actor/admin/puppeteers.

Player created content, subject to approval by admin/editors/writers.

AI/NPC- and PC Actors given latitude within the grand-epochal
storyline. Consider the Lord of the Rings setting, from the Silmarillion
to the LoTR trilogy, several millenia pass, events can be scripted along
a large scale timeline, giving latitude to small scale timelines for the
creation of new sub-plots.

I believe that each of these generically described objections could be
handled in a variety of ways, not just in the theoretical ways I’ve described.

I think my main argument is that MMORPGs need to grow as entertainment
‘literature’, and in order to do so, must eventually adopt some of the
constraints of real ‘dramatic’ literature. Timeline and mortality foremost,
since ultimately human experience is shaped and constrained by the
experience of both.

Suspending time and mortality is not conducive to the storytelling aspect
of online ‘role playing’, which is in essence that age old fixation with
dramatic retelling, and play acting as part of social consciousness.

Keep in mind that my suggestions are merely that, I am not proposing an
unproven recipe for successful storytelling MMORPG’s but rather examing
some conceptual approaches that could be taken in creating a more story
rich MMORPG environment.

That MMORPGs are the venue for this, new dramatic medium is simply the
collective human psyche finding a new stage on which to strut.