I was going to do a “second impressions” covering the things I did like about WoW after my first - but I was impugned in IRC by the initial brothers RJO and GD. Apparently, in this day and age, it's no longer en vogue to point out the Emperor has no clothes, you must then design for him a replacement set. And woe betide if you aren't already an imperial couturier, for then you probably shouldn't even be opening your mouth about the nakedness anyway.

Now, I do have a few ideas about what to do in MMOGs, but unfortunately you don't appear to be waving a couple of million dollars around, so you're not going to get the full monty. However, so as not to appear entirely “evasive” I'll put up a few ideas relating to what I mentioned the other day.

One of the things RJO opined was that I was “making a complaint against the genre” and this is largely correct. However, just because everyone else has already done it doesn't make it OK for WoW to be lauded for it. WoW is seemingly the biggest “western” MMOG ever, with Blizzard trumpeting some 1,000,000 sales in the US, the Antipodes and Europe. If there was a game with the ability to experiment, this was it. They could have pissed off half of the people and still had a massive success. In playing safe, in simply refining what was there to what is an admittedly quality concoction, Blizzard dropped the ball (and I mixed my metaphors). I'm not one to demand a revolution in every new game, that every release brings the next generation game - I leave that to marketing. But there were some things that I think are well within reach - evolutionary things - that, if they had been added, would have enhanced the genre rather than merely refining it.

Quests

Now here, I said I'd done “[t]he logging in and clicking on the guy with the quest to kill 20 thingies and loot 10 wossnames [and the fight] through the hordes of thingmen to kill their leader and return triumphant with his head on a pole” before. The former of these seem almost invariably couched in the form “the thingies are invading our lands, we must beat them back”. Off you trundle and spank 20 thingies and head back. “Well done”, says the quest-giver. “You have beaten back the thingies and cleansed the land of them. They will never trouble us again.”

Except they still do, since the next adventurer needs them to complete his quest. As said, this problem infests many games and I was thinking of doing an in-character rant by Capt. Sensible on how the authorities in Paragon City keep releasing the criminals back onto the streets. Equally, WoW should not be praised for doing the same thing. The problem, which is highlighted with the “kill Uniqueson the Single Onething” type of quest is that the quests are set up in the manner of a funfair ride for everyone (including “you must be this tall to ride” natch). Maybe it's a legacy of the single-player RPGs that MMOGs grew from, but they seem to be trying to make everyone the Hero by letting them kill Uniqueson, but sticking their fingers in their ears and humming loudly when anyone mentions that everyone's killed him.

Of course, there's the argument that such things respawn as players do and, if you want to take the easy way out you can go for that (though WoW doesn't seem to; when I killed some poor wandering Lizard the quest giver happily chuntered about getting men to go and pick up the carcass). Asheron's Call made some interesting steps in the right direction by letting you make wax moulds of some items on a quest so that artisans back in civilisation could make copies - though, since one item was a suit of armour, the image of players fighting their way our lugging a life-size wax mould of said armour is almost as odd.

What I'd like to see here is actual change to the populations of thingies: to actually be able to drive back the thingies and restore the plains to their rightful owner. With unique mobs, at the very least, work into the backstory why they keep coming back. Would it kill everyone if you couldn't kill the boss? If he/she/it did a runner when defeated? Hows about combine the two, have two different enemies encroaching on the homenest and give players the task of attacking the one that's the most dangerous, from where a powerful leader has emerged to lead their attack. Once he's defeated, his people withdraw, but the other side get stronger. Maybe even allow the players to eventually triumph further down the line when the average level is higher.

Combat

Here I said “I've done the annoying near-random death because this time 50% of my attacks missed”. If you've played almost any MMOG you'll have come across the situation where you seemingly miss more than you want to. Arguably, this is simply clustering rather than an actual flaw (unless you are noting how often it is you hit in a row) in the random number generator. On the other hand, when you win one battle against a mob handily, then fail spectacularly against it's identical twin you have a good right to think there's an issue with the system itself. Using random numbers is a relic of the absolute root for MMOGs: tabletop RPGs, specifically Dungeons & Dragons. Of course, there, the issue was how to simulate combat with, at best, two slightly bendy lead figurines and, rather than employ backyard mechanisms such as shouting “bang you're dead” and “no... I saw you first” they went with dice.

Thirty years on and we've still not moved past the concept (failed a saving throw perhaps?). It's naive to think that MMOGs could use the player-skills of such direct connection games as Counter-Strike or Unreal Tournament over the the greater latency of a server-based system, and much of the appeal of these games is down to building up your character's stats. But the model used so commonly, and to no great effect in WoW, whereby the defences of a character are set up as a passive immobile rock on which the power of the opponents skills are applied seems ripe for rethinking. I for one would like to see defence brought under the player's control, with the ability to attempt a dodge or a parry or a block as an option rather than a random chance under the system's control. To counter the latency issue, wherein a player might be trying to dodge a blow which has already landed on the server, have a queueing system in which (rolls a die) eight actions are set up at a time, then set against the opponent's eight. This might seem initially turn-based combat but, at this stage. anyone who thinks WoW's hit-the-most-powerful-attack-you-have-as-often-as-you-can model isn't really also turn-based is deluding themselves.

Backstory

I wish someone would explain to me the popularity of Elves. I don't think I've seen anything interesting happen using Elves since Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies - and he was taking the piss out of them. High fantasy is simply a drag on creativity - if you move your elves too far from the classical elf, then you might as well not bother with the name; if you stick with it, then really, what's left to do with them? Repeat for the other races (including Pratchett being the last place of any originality). The only interesting race in WoW is the Tauren and that's not by much - they're basically idealised Native Americans. My recollections of AC are coloured somewhat by it being my first MMOG, and I doubt I'll ever quite get the same feeling of newness and intrigue when encountering something now because I've become “trained” in playing MMOGs. But I can't see it even rising above “meh” with these generic fantasy characters littering the place.

In conclusion then: WoW may have hit its targets, but I think they put them lower than they could have. Still disappointing.