Does it have to be a sandbox?

The MMORPG industry is a slow one. When a trend emerges, it takes time for developers and/or publishers to react and release games incorporating said trends. The heavy years of “WoW clones” were 2007-2010 while for the players, at least those vocal enough to put their thoughts into writing, it was clear since 2009, at the latest, that they wanted something different. Back then, we weren’t all too sure about what we wanted- we wanted “different but familiar enough”, a vague statement. Games like Star Wars: the old Republic, The Secret World, Guild Wars 2 and Wildstar tried to find a comfortable spot. Since 2012, maybe 2013, with the announcement of ArcheAge and Everquest Next (haha), it seemed clear that players want MMOs to return to sandbox design. Slowly, this new batch of MMORPGs arrives: with ArcheAge last year, now Black Desert Online and soon Shroud of the Avatar, Camelot Unchained, Star Citizen, Shards Online, Albion, the Repopulation 2.0 and so on. MMORPGs seem to be going back into a niche and are happy for it, while MMOs are going ever more mainstream (The Division).

With Black Desert Online, there’s this odd discussion whether it truly is a sandbox or just a glorified themepark with a lack of content.

What is a “Sandbox”, anyway?

I’ve read that a “true sandbox” has to offer its players more freedom in terms of building structures in the world (although we all know that if they’d do that, we’d live in Dong-land).

The discussion about whether or not an MMORPG is a sandbox is quite old and done, really. Everybody who tackles this topic- and me too, will throw the definition of “sandbox” (Wikipedia even redirects to “open world”) out there: it’s about an open world instead of linear level design. Taking this definition verbatim, there are many MMORPGs that are a sandbox- namely all MMORPGs taking place in worlds without artificial barriers and invisible walls. That would be true for Rift or Wildstar, for example. While we all have different views on that, here’s the part of the definition that gets me:

Their main appeal is they provide a simulated reality and allow players to develop their character and its behavior in the direction of their choosing. In these cases, there is often no concrete goal or end to the game.

No concrete goal or end to the game. Let that sink in and think about the reaction something like this would get from MMO players- we’d be telling each others about missing endgame and a pointlessness of the leveling process and we’d be asking where the content is. On the other hand, having no concrete goal or end to the game is also standard operation for MMORPGs- you can play World of Warcraft for battle pets only, or for good-looking armor, or for achievements the auction house and so on. There are as many motivations to play this game as there are players. You could argue, of course, that you beat the game by beating whatever content is the “most difficult” in the game right now- but this still is not a defined ending.

I need to figure that focus-thing out for future screenshots.

Now, i do know that when MMO players debate about a game being a sandbox/themepark, they’re not talking about that definition shown above- because that definition doesn’t allow for much discussion in MMO space. I know that when we talk about “Themepark”, we talk about developer-created content taking the front seat. When we’re talking about “Sandboxes”, we think about player-created content and “emergent gameplay”, whatever that means. But even if we’d draw the lines there, things get blurry- is Neverwinter a sandbox, then? Because players can create content there- or are these players simply hobbyist-content-developers?

In the end, if you walk away from that Wikipedia definition of open world, no end, no goal, you will never come to an objective observation whether one game is a sandbox or not, with one exception: when a game gives players almost complete control of their environment (while providing some rules instead of content) like EVE does. But we don’t want EVE- at least the majority doesn’t, not even the majority of the vocal minority, while most of them state they do want a (pve-)sandbox. Giving players freedom also seems to include the ability for players to ruin other players’ enjoyment of a game.

I think the key here is in a small part of the definition cited above: simulated reality.

Simulated reality and options

Sandbox or Themepark doesn’t matter, really. What matters is if an MMORPG is trying to build a simulated reality / virtual world and provides players with options in how to spend time in the game: things like pve, housing, crafting, trade, fishing, pet and mount collection, character looks, character builds and yes, even pvp- they need to be central to the design of an MMORPG, because, MMORPGs are good because they provide all that- they’re basically a gaming genre-mix. When you take this into account, you will find that Everquest 2, an MMORPG of the “Themepark” subgenre, in the end offered more ways to play it than Darkfall or Mortal Online, both “Sandboxes” do.

Is Black Desert Online a Sandbox?

Is BDO a sandbox? For me, it’s too early to tell. Right now, i get the feeling that the best course of action would be to continue questing to finally arrive at a few quests that might teach me BDO’s many systems. A real sandbox would have to offer a significant player economy, as well- at least in MMOs. You’ll have trade as an option in Black Desert Online- trade, that is- as in ArcheAge- about transporting special goods from one place to the other and buying/selling to NPCs.

The furniture merchant in Olvia

I’m only level 11 and i’m already able to trade, go fishing, collecting, milk cows (a daily quest), go mob grinding or questing or simply explore the world. However, i do feel that i need to reach Heidel City for the game to truly open up. And i think Black Desert is a game where having Alts makes life a lot easier. So these are my plans in that game for now: reaching Heidel City through questing with Nuria, the Witch and then go and create the Valkyrie. Although i feel “on rails” in this part of the game, i’m convinced that by the time i reach level 50 at the latest- and it seems to only take a double-digit number of hours /played- i’ll be free to play the game in the way i want to.

Milestones: Level 25 in ESO and Orsinium first impressions

Reaching level 25 in ESO I’ve been a bit on the slow side in the last two weeks- with first our family being sick and then doing other stuff in …

Backpacker: a few shots from Orsinium

We’ve been to Orsinium last night and i have to say i was heavily impressed. The design in terms of landscape, the city, the interiors, quests and story is great. It’s …

Backpacker: from Duillond to Bree

Lord of the Rings Online has almost never been my main game, but since it was released, it has always been my “comfort game”- the game i’d return to, if other games weren’t as good as i thought or something else came up. I really like Lord of the Rings for many different reasons- the atmosphere, the landscape-design, middle-earth (of course) and the very relaxing gameplay. Unfortunately, the last one can make it tedious to play in long stretches, as well. Lord of the Rings Online- at least in the way i play it- is mostly about the questing and i do get tired of the questgrind quite quickly.

When i started to play the game in 2007 or early 2008, i created an Elf-Loremaster and wasn’t very patient when it came to seeing the Shire and Bree for the first time. I made the trip as early as possible- by foot. The world of Lotro is a great one- at least in the early levels- there’ll be villages, roads, all kinds of things to explore and see. And it is large! When Lotro released, large game worlds were the standard- if you’d compare it to the size of newer worlds and what we are used to by now, Lotro’s Middle Earth becomes huge.

Map of Ered Luin

Nowadays, we can ride on our own mounts. So i did, to recapture that old experience i’ve only made once and see how long it would take me- the answer? 18 Minutes, on a horse, with some ore-gathering strewn in between. This is, by the way, the road from the first questing area (for dwarves and elves) to the second. I can’t remember how it used to be- if we had to walk this distance, which, by foot, would take more than 30 minutes. But i think we had to.

Ered Luin

As an elf, you’ll start in Ered Luin. It’s a small starting area, by comparison, because it is divided in two starting experiences for levels 1 to 15, unlike the Shire, where only Hobbits begin and the Bree-Lands, where the 1-15 experience for humans takes place in only a fraction of the whole map.

Celondim

I’ve never played a Dwarf in Lotro, so i can’t comment on their starting experience- for the elves, the story revolves mostly around the threat of war between dwarves and elves. There’s an “elf prince” that got kidnapped and the elves suspect the “good dwarves” of commiting the crime. In the course of the storyline, we’ll find out (i really don’t think a spoiler warning is needed here) that they didn’t do it, but another family of dwarves. We’ll then work together in defeating the threat of peace in Ered Luin.

Duillond by night

The rest of the elf storyline (read: the normal quests) is mostly about ruins, some missing persons, two brothers who can’t decide and/or persuade each other whether to stay or leave Middle Earth and things like that. It all gives the sense of a race that had its best days in the past- they’re practically living in it and almost every quest- at least those that i remember- has a connection to the past. Only the true filler quests (too many wolves, please kill 10 of them) don’t.

Kheledul

As notable locations, there are the towns of Celondim, where you begin your journey, Duillond, a refuge whose design i never really understood (many bridges- its layout is simple, really, but the steps/bridges always annoy me), a few ruins, Kheledul, a dwarf-port that’s been taken by the evil dwarves, a Vineyard, overrun by goblins, Thrasi’s lodge- a cabin with a few quests the dwarf-town of Gondamon, where the Prologue ends and Rath Teraig.

There’s more, of course, but that were the places i visited before turning to level 15 and riding for Bree.

Memory Lane

Unfortunately, you can’t reach Bree from the Ered Luin without a portal. Most of Lotro’s world is open, not zoned, but at some points, there are only portals to get you from one area to the next. For the release version of Lotro this is the only portal i can think of (besides housing zones).

The other side of the portal

You’ll then continue through the Shire. The Shire is one of the places where you can really see how much passion Turbine put into it- the realization of the Shire is all it needs to be. From the Hobbits, the landscape to the general atmosphere and the music/sound everything fits. The quests, as well, but that’s not the topic for today.

Hobbiton

In the Shire, there are a few villages- and i think every one of them has its own Inn. I’d like to visit them another time. The Lotro Shire not only fits my imagination of the Shire from the books, but also my ideal for an MMORPG zone in general- villages, fields, woods, many, many signs of civilization.

Crossing the Brandywine

The Bree-Lands are equally good, by the way, with the namesake town as the highlight. Bree is, in my opinion, one of (if not the) best designed cities in MMORPGs. It isn’t “economic”, many times you’ll have to travel annoying distances between, for instance, the auction house, the bank and the crafting house, but it is a great town- and again, it is very atmospheric- it seems like a town, that one.

Sunrise over Bree

And then, of course, you’ll reach the Prancing Pony and the trip is over.

Reaching the Prancing Pony

So much more

All this, you get to see with level 15. And writing this, i could think of so many things to see, explore and write about- the Inns of the Shire, the Villages of the Shire and the Bree-Lands, other interesting places, the quests in the Shire and why it fits into this region. Bree alone could fill a posting like this one, the exploration deeds in these zones and so on.

For explorers and lore fanatics, Lotro has a lot to offer. I’m taking it slow on this one, because i don’t want to fall into the trap of not-reading the quest text again, but i had a lot of fun in these first 15 levels.

Backpacker: World of Warcraft’s Teldrassil

World of Warcraft has a few qualities, which shouldn’t be surprising since it’s still the most played MMORPG out there. For me, two are very noticeable- the fluid gameplay/combat/movement and the second one, the world/zone building. It’s not only the graphics and Blizzards ability to get the most out of their decade-old-engine that WoW still looks good- it’s because of the zone design. So i decided to start a “backpacker” series for that. It’s easy to do, too, since you can play World of Warcraft for free up to level 20. After some research, i came to the conclusion that a Druid would work best, what with the travel form and such. It might be possible to explore zones much further into the level bracket when playing this class.

Leaving Darnassus

I don’t know where this plan is going to lead me- maybe even into a subscription, but if i’m honest, the last times i started playing WoW, the questing got to me. It’s always the questing- with Rift, Lord of the Rings and WoW. While Rift has decent alternatives to level a character, i don’t think one could say the same for WoW. Sure, there are dungeons and they’re great experiences- but i wouldn’t know why i should play the instanced part of the game to experience the open world. And questing is slow. Exploration doesn’t seem to be rewarded with xp, so leveling through exploration and crafting/gathering is not a good alternative. So you’ve got questing, pvp, pet battles, gathering and dungeons as ways to level.

Gathering could work. But it would take a lot of time, too much for me, even when i could combine it with grinding mobs.

Anyway, the possibility to level a character to 20 without paying gives me the option to travel through quite a few zones. I’ve always been an Alliance player, so i’ll use a Nightelf Druid for this, even if that means i’ll be starting on the wrong continent. I think i can leave for Stormwind come level 10 (already there, but haven’t looked if i can take the ship over there).

So let’s take a look. I don’t really know how long this lasts, but WoW’s zones are believable to me, and that’s the great advantage. In Lotro, for instance, the third zone you’ll play in will consist of one village/inn and some ruins as homesteads for people. I don’t know why these people don’t build and seem to be content in their ruins, but it strikes me as odd. In WoW, which i didn’t experience a whole lot (until Un’Goro in TBC’s time), the zones leading up to Un’Goro seem…well, despite it being a fantastic, sometimes odd world, it seems more “civilized”. I mean, villages look like villages.

The starting village of Shadowglen

Look at that- that’s where your life as a nightelf begins- it might not be exactly as big, but the whole layout is similar to the faction capital of the Guardians in Rift, Sanctum. I’d like to highlight that i don’t want to devalue Rift by stating this, but simply to state how much i like these sort of things. And it’s an exaggeration, of course. Sanctum is still bigger than Shadowglen’s center.

Another thing that i didn’t remember – and that might change later on – is that World of Warcraft really is generous with space/landscape. In other, more modern games, mob density is quite high- it’s for the sake of accessibility, of course, so that you don’t have to search for the mob you need for a quest or compete with other players for the same mobs, but if you look at zone design from that perspective only, what remains is a functional map. When you leave room for all kinds of things- villages, wildlife, trees, the odd cavern, rivers, lakes and whathaveyou- the zone looks and feels a whole lot more believable.

Lake Al’Ameth

To Dolanaar

WoW’s zone design always impressed me. Sure, i like my fantasy worlds even more “open”, even less “zoney” and not as “themepark-styled” (thinking about the “haunted house zone” for levels 20 to 30), but there are few games providing that- the last one i know was Vanguard, which had a great world albeit with its own flaws. Other games are good, as well- Rift and Lotro’s worlds are open, and especially Lotro offers great landscapes that still hold themselves very good in terms of graphics, Final Fantasy 14’s zones are of a very good design, as well, but they feel quite small.

What SWTOR needs

…in my opinion, of course. It’s quite a silent week for me, this one, at least in regards to writing here. The reason being that the nursery school teachers in germany are on strike indefinitely, which means at least this week, possibly going into next week. So our son is home and i stay with him- which in turn means that the time i usually write something is blocked. In terms of playing, his being sick at the moment doesn’t help. It’s nothing too bad, bad his sleep is uncalm. So, well, not much of a gaming week here.

That is a bummer, because you know these times when you can’t wait to log into a game? I’m in one of these phases. Doesn’t matter if it were FF14, SWTOR or ESO- my current trinity- i’m really enjoying my time in those games i play- although it has been SWTOR, exclusively, in the last week.

While i like the game very much and am surprised at how good its design fits both my preferences and my available time to play, there are some things i miss in SWTOR. So here are a few pointers.

Planetary storylines should be their own thing

I do realize that this is what later on happens anyway, after the class stories are finished. But i wished quests in SWTOR came three-fold: class quests, planetary quests and sidequests. With 12XP currently going on a seperation like this would help a lot in making use of the experience bonus in place while still following the main theme of the individual planets. If there is a way to tell the planetary story apart- or experience/read it ingame without doing every quest there is on a planet, let me know. I’m unaware of an option like this.

Is that…a gate? Also, while we’re at it: please add a keybind for hiding/displaying nameplates!

If planetary quests were highlighted in some way, i guess my approach to quicker levelling in SWTOR while still experiencing more of the story would be to finish the planetary questlines first and the class stories after.

Mentoring

Ok, i don’t know anyone in game (yet – made contact with Shintar, though), so this wouldn’t be of much use for me except maybe in flashpoints, but every MMORPG, in my opinion, needs to provide the option to experience content together in a ‘challenging’ and ‘worthwhile’ way for friends to play together. It would certainly help social guilds in planning and executing social events that make use of available content.

A little help for the srubs

If there was the ability to set your own level, it would also help with the 12XP issue of “levelling too fast” since you could do both- level quickly and experience the stories you’d want to experience.

Usable decor

Shortly after the FC meeting in FF14, i went out of our guild house (or whatever they’re called), saw a fountain and clicked on it. To my surprise, something happened. That, of course, was after we sat on couches while discussing FC-related stuff in our house. In SWTOR, as far as i can tell, usable objects are in the majority. Sure, you can read mail, store items, gather resources and probably do other things i don’t know about. But sitting on a couch is done by jumping on the seat and using the /sit command- success varies. It might be an engine thing, but it’s a bummer that housing is mostly limited to “looking nice”.

Account or legacy wide friendlist

This is a stealth-edit. When i tried to contact Shintar, i added her to my friendlist. For a while afterwards, i kept wondering why i didn’t see her online anymore. Then i realized that i was on a different character, so i’ll have to add her 6 or 7 republic chars to each and every friendlist of my characters- if she’d want to do the same for me, it would involve even more work. I appreciate the ability to sometimes play with a “secret” character if you don’t want to meet anyone (especially useful for guildleaders), but it would still be a great help if there was at least a faction-wide friendlist for accounts/legacies.

That’s all?

I’m pretty sure there’s more. I could join the chorus and wish for more open planets. I had a disappointing experience the last time i played Soofoo on Tatooine. I saw a gate-like structure on the edge of the spaceport/first town and, of course, went there to explore. I was out of the gate for a few meters/yards when i got the warning: “exhaustion zone. Turn back”.

See, open space! But don’t go there….it’s exhausting.

But i’ve made my peace with the zone design, realizing that maybe it isn’t really about the planets. When all those important people in the movies land on a planet, they don’t go hiking, after all. They are on these planets for a mission- so are we, the players. So i changed my stance and just view them as setpieces/backdrops where the action takes place. Still, i hope for more open maps sooner or later, and as far as i know, they’re there.

I’m still hugely enjoying my time in both FF14 and SWTOR, hope to be able to join the next fc meeting in FF14 as well as a guild in SWTOR soon.

There and back again: Combe

So this Lord of the Rings Online project i thought about? It’s kind of in motion. This week, our son isn’t an easy sleeper; i think it has something to do with his going to the kindergarten now. Although it’s just 2 hours a day right now, at night he’s busy digesting everything he took in there. So i couldn’t play pretty much at all this week. Yesterday he slept at 10 pm and i found myself wanting to relax a bit before going to bed. But what can you do with a session of 45-60 minutes? Final Fantasy XIV was out, as was Everquest 2 and The Elder Scrolls. Guild Wars 2 would have worked, maybe, but it’s been quite some time for me and i’d need a longer session to get reaquainted to the game. So i went, loaded Lotro up, logged in with my Beorning-Beorning and continued my travels in Middle Earth.

Combe

Middle Earth is beautiful. You can say what you like about those avatars and their animation, but the world is beautifully crafted. I didn’t do a lot- what really happened was that i gathered all the quests in Combe, went to get a crafting profession, worked with the materials i got and quested right up to Filbert’s uncle, who’s standing in the Chetwood, missing his handkerchief.

Combe – the Inn and training hall

I did all of that before, to be sure. And sometimes i would roll an alt with the intention of reading all quest text “this time”. But i have to confess that i’m so used to skipping quest text and seeing questing basically a grind that there always came a time when i fell into the old habit of just accepting all the quests, follow the marker and deliver. If you do it this way, you’re playing Lord of the Rings Online wrong, of course. But i also have to say that it doesn’t help if you go into a village and have 8 open quest rings floating around. The Secret World does a better job of giving story-related weight to its quests and i think it has a lot to do with the fact that you can’t just pick up a billion of them at once.

Combe – the crafting hall

At least yesterday, it worked. I read every quest text i gathered up, knowing for the first time what i was doing there. Woodworkers need to get rid of wolves to go and lumber in safety, to get Archet rebuilt. A mother is looking for her son who wanted to find his fortune in Combe and found the Blackwolds instead. Then there’s a man whose father was a robber and got hanged, looking for treasure. An old man, his farm stolen by the Blackwolds, wants the chain of his seemingly dead dog. A lumberjack is missing his notebook- you’ll need that to find the tree the robber was hanged on- he lost it when fleeing the Chetwood to get away from some Blackwolds.

Lumberjacks near Combe

And then, of course, there is a hobbit who’s uncle went into the wood to give the Blackwolds a piece of his mind, only to have his handkerchief stolen. And probably others i forgot. All in all, you could say that Combe’s in a bad situation right now, with the Blackwolds so close, making the Chetwood unsave. Of course, this will all seem harmless the further you get into the game, but to be honest, i like these “small problems”- helping a village rebuild is so much more satisfying than saving the world. I really don’t know why that is, maybe because it seems so normal.

Combe lake

I happen to enjoy the first zones into the worlds we visit more than the later zones- you’ll have villages, small towns, townspeople with their “small problems”. You have a beautiful scenery, an inn to visit and all that. Later on, there’ll be Lava. Or in Lotro’s case, the next two zones will feature an Inn, a burning town and an old ruin as capitals of the zones. And don’t even get me started on the zones after that. Of course, they’ll have their own beauty, and their own storyline, but i always miss these green zones with signs of humanity sprinkled across in later zones- and funny enough, most games have this “problem”. I don’t know if it gets better when you leave Moria in Lotro, though. I heard Rohan has a nice scenery.

Final Fantasy XIV ARR

It’s time to confess. While i’d made a point for playing and sticking with one MMORPG, it doesn’t come easy for me, as well. Sticking to Rift is as good a plan as any, but when you don’t have any urge to login, something isn’t right with your choice.

On friday, i remembered there was going to be a Final Fantasy XIV ARR open beta this weekend. With time to play and the urge to find out why some players seem to be very happy with how the game turned out i decided to give it a go.

First off, i own a copy of Final Fantasy 14 1.0 – i didn’t like it, but one thing stuck out positively: in general, i liked the approach to crafting. I didn’t quite understand it at the time, but i saw similarities to Vanguard’s crafting system. After spending every available minute of the weekend playing FF14ARR, i’m happy to say that i still like the approach to crafting- and better yet, i also like the game.

The good

I won’t go into changes from 1.0 very much, because i didn’t come to know the first iteration of the game, but one thing needs to be pointed out: the user interface is hugely improved, not only in design but also gameplay-wise. I remember it being quite a pain to group up in 1.0- while i didn’t group up at the weekend, i can’t imagine that it will be troublesome in ARR.

There’s an old school feel about Final Fantasy 14 that i liked very much. I liked the idea of (level-)gated  content options. I wanted to craft as early as possible, but had to find out that you can only get your second class after finishing up the level 10 quest of your first class. I wanted to go to Limsa Lominsa to become a weaver, but had to find out that i’ll have to finish the level 15 storyline quest to unlock airship travel and so on. So there was always something i look forward to reaching- at first it was level 10, then level 5 of my first gathering profession (botany), then level 15 for going to Limsa Lominsa.

Final Fantasy 14: a realm reborn also has a remarkable love for details. I don’t know if this will continue through the zones, but the early ones around Gridania all struck me as being believable. I prefer to see some civilization when i’m out adventuring, and fact is that most MMORPGs lack that kind of design- you’ll start in a pretty wood, maybe with houses or small villages strewn about, but the second, or third zone at the very least is wholly devoid of many signs of humanity. The early adventuring zones around Gridania still have villages, houses and other buildings in them, which makes for a pleasant stay in those areas. Also, the scenery is very beautiful and changes a lot from day to night.

The combat also gets a positive mention here- it is on the slow side of things, but i like that. Action combat doesn’t leave much time for chats and so the whole experience in those games can feel somewhat lonely, despite there being 10 other guys doing the same quest as i do.

The highlight is still the gathering/crafting. It’s some kind of minigame- when you chop at a tree it’s not only lumber you can get- you’ll have a selection of items you could get out of that tree, each one coming with a chance to get it. You have abilities in your hotbar according to your gathering/crafting job. For botany, there were abilities to show the next tree in my levelrange, raise the chances for successfully farming the materials of a tree and so on. For crafting, i only came up to level 3, but it looks beautiful and most importantly: no crafting job is self-sufficient. You can, of course, level all gathering and crafting jobs, but my guess is that this will be a long term project- if you’d want to be self-sufficient all by yourself, you’d have to level all crafting and gathering jobs parallel to each other. I didn’t count, but i think that would be about 9 jobs to level- in addition to your adventuring job.

So my guess is that at first you’ll be better off just buying things from retainers when you need materials from other jobs. When you start crafting as early as possible i think you don’t really have a choice, since you can not travel to the other capitals to learn the other gathering/crafting jobs.

One thing i wish i knew before changing over to gathering: you should keep some level 1 clothes- otherwise you are going to begin your gathering life in your undies. Fortunately there’s new clothes when you get to level 5 in your job. I guess one could buy something from vendors or other players, but i just “walked it off”.

The hunting log also gets a positive mention – i understand this as some relative of the deed system from Lotro: you get a list of enemies to hunt down and get extra rewards for doing so. Tier 1 of those was quite easily completed just by following quests and backtracking a bit for enemies i fought before attaining the hunting log. There’s something similar for gathering- you can see where to get resources and what resources you already gathered. I don’t know if this one comes with experience bonus, as well.

And finally, i really liked that i could retire to an inn room before logging out to get resting experience, which amounts to experience bonus for defeating enemies as in most other games. As said, this game seems to have a love for details- resting in a guest room is one of these things.

The downsides

Every MMORPG has them, right? So far, i’ve only encountered one- and a highly subjective thing at that- there’s cutesy stuff all over. But really, i’m happy with those as well if i’ll continue to have as much fun with this game as i had this weekend.

Other than that- well, some might call the game “business as usual”- when you look at mechanics, combat mechanics especially, there isn’t much new about this game- and also when you look past combat, almost everything has been there in other games.

Conclusion

FF14 won’t get your attention by proclaiming innovation and/or new features, but somehow it manages to bring older, missed ones back into a new game. I had a lot of fun with it, it even made me read quest and help texts…and enjoy it. It’s a long time ago that i chose to fight some more enemies or gather some more resources than needed just because i had fun doing it, but it happened to me in this game.

Once again, i was in for a big surprise- it’s funny that this seems to happen always with games where i don’t expect much. I’m really looking forward to next saturday when early access starts.

What’s in a sandbox?

When i felt i couldn’t yet pin down the sandbox in EQ Next, i came to think about this- what constitutes a sandbox? Then i read Azuriels EQ Next impressions and, while he didn’t mention the term “Sandbox”, it became more clear.

World vs. game

In a world, you have options- and these options include more than choosing which mobs to fight and in what way (Rift does an excellent job in offering multiple gameplay options for mob slaughter). We all know housing as “another thing to do”. Add an involved crafting system, trade, exploration and maybe even world-building to that and you have some options for players with different play styles. The thing about MMORPGs is that they can be many games in one- there could be your economics simulation (this doesn’t seem to be the correct english word, sorry), a strategy game as well as a “city simulator” and of course your RPG in it- at least.

This possible combination of singleplayer-genres alongside the possibility to play these games with many other players (being some kind of social network, as well- which in my opinion is what made WoW so successful) is what makes MMORPGs so compelling.

There needs to be a game attached to the world- most players will want to have some kind of progress with their characters and they want to be adventurous, fight difficult enemies, craft unique items and so on.

When someone says the “G” in the MMORPG part is the least important, i really think nowadays this just means “the ‘G’ is fine as is, please focus on the other parts”- when you take a look at the newer games, i think they nailed the gameplay part- GW2’s combat is fun, then there are the slightly more strategic combat systems of WoW, EQ2, Rift, TSW and so on, which are also fun in their own way. And if you like your combat really very much on the strategic side- EVE has that covered. So the combat (and PvE-) gameplay is just fine.

Systems vs. Scripts

Now, here are two words describing the same sandbox vs. themepark / world vs. game – discussion, at least from my perspective. What we need to move the genre forward, is an implementation of systems that slowly start to replace scripts. Actually, when i think about that, there is a possibility that EQ Next has this covered. When we compare GW2 with EQN in regards to the emergent AI of mobs in EQN and dynamic events in GW2, it’s clear that in EQN, there’s this system of likes & dislikes (i’m assuming it gets implemented well), which can lead to all kinds of situations and the scripted, cyclical dynamic events of GW2 on the other hand.

Both implementations could lead, for instance, to a village being attacked by orcs/centaurs. If these orcs from EQN serve as a faction instead of mobs, you, as a player, can make a decision to help the orcs attack the village- this option is not available to you in GW2, since the centaurs are going to attack you anyway.

Now, i wonder: what will EQN do if a part of the players decide to defend the village and another part is helping the attackers? PvP would be one option- it wouldn’t be FFA-PvP, but could be restricted to this area and to this moment until the attack is either completed successfully or not. But there might be no need for that. When you don’t allow players to attack each other, this might come out as some variation of a MOBA- the only targets being the NPCs. Now, i’m really making this up as i go, since we don’t know if it’s going to work this way in EQN or not- but what was revealed at least allows for that speculation.

You can expand that line of thought, of course. Boss behaviour instead of instanced dungeons- you could let raid bosses lay down a camp somewhere in the open world and let them spread their influence outwards. If the world is big enough, there’ll always be places where these mobs could hide for some time. A trade system instead of an auction house, placing resources in a “realistic” way in the world, making rare resources rare and not just attainable at later levels. Making prizes local, allowing for caravans. Implementing a degradation system for items, so you can’t use what you have for eternity.

Player-to-player vs. Player-to-Environment

The systems in a Sandbox MMORPG should focus on interactions between players. Your equipment degrades with time, so you need a crafter to build new armor or weapons or to repair your stuff. Prizes and resources are local, so you need traders to bring the items to your area. Mobs are free to roam, so you might need experienced adventurers in your area to allow you to farm the resources and enable trade. And so on. These interdependencies need to be build into the core of the game, allowing/encouraging/forcing players to interact with each other. The trend in MMORPGs has been self-sufficiency- and this needs to be stopped.

Do we want a Sandbox MMORPG?

Is “Sandbox” the solution to the problems in the genre? Is there even a problem? The term “sandbox” is a vague one, and everybody’s going to have their own opinion about it. But that’s not really what many of us want- what we’d like to see is an MMORPG that we’ll want to play for years, not months- it’s just that i think at least some of the stuff mentioned above would be helpful in being that game.

As Azuriel put it: “All long-term compelling MMO content is player-based”. Again, i agree. Whether the game providing that is called Sandbox, Themepark, Sandpark or Themebox doesn’t really concern me- but there should be (another) one.

EQ Next reveal

So, voxels. We now know something about Everquest Next. I’ll keep myself short on the reveals itself, there are features for your reading pleasure over at Massively, Rock Paper Shotgun, mmorpg.com and ZAM.

To summarize what i got from the reveals:

• Norrath, the world of Everquest Next, is voxel based. Quite like Minecraft, i hear. The thing is that this leads to destructible environment, caves you can explore/find and a changing world. It seems characters can start to dig anywhere they want and might find something underneath the surface of the world. Also, fights leave their mark in the world.
• Mobs will have some form of AI, they’ll function with a list of likes and dislikes and might for instance reposition themselves when their current spot strikes them as too risky.
• Questing will happen without exclamation marks, you happen to witness stuff in the world and choose to participate. There’ll also be public quests that last for months.
• Skill sets function quite like in Guild Wars 2: you get 4 abilities depending on your weapon and 4 abilities you can choose from a pool of abilities available to your classes.
• You can multiclass, but classes seem to have to be found in the world, as well.
• There are no levels, so you can play with your friends at any time
• Characters will be able to vault over obstacles, slide down inclines, or jump up and grab a ledge to pull up

So, that’s what i got from the reveal. First, let me mention that all these articles i linked above seem to have their roots in a presentation the authors saw at E3 earlier this year and yesterday an embargo was lifted so they could write up their impressions.

As far as the reveals go, i know they sound crazy and like a true innovation in MMORPGs, but i’m still cautious. If you recall my wants and needs for finding a new mmo home, here we have a feature list that concentrates on the world part, and it is done well. Norrath next seems to be a truly changing world and SOE seems to have found the RPG again. With EQ Next Landmark, which seems to be some kind of toolset for players to build stuff that might find its way in EQ Next, SOE seems to have the point of having something to return to, as well.

What’s missing for me, is something about crafting and trade. They didn’t say anything about that yet, and there are some clues one could follow allowing the assumption that crafting will be a solid experience in EQ Next (EQ2’s crafting is viewed as one of the better systems and there is a designer on board in EQN that changed EQ2’s system for the better), so i guess information on crafting and trade is still to come.

Here’s my main gripe, though: when you leave out the voxels, what’s revealed so far could just be Guild Wars 2 again. I’m not saying they are the same, but ArenaNet used almost the same descriptions for their game: changing world (“living story”), random encounters and “obvious” quests (dynamic events), mobs changing their behaviour as well as a living world.

There is something in all the information we got, something underlying everything, that makes me believe SOE. Maybe it’s that i think the message players have been sending for some years by now has reached SOE- MMORPG fans want better worlds instead of better games. Get the MMO-players instead of the “three month crowd” and you have a winner.

It seems to me SOE is aiming high, they seem to know that the time might be right for a new massive hit in the mmorpg space if you try to innovate and succeed in giving MMORPG players what they want- and judging by all we know, they might pull it off. Color me intrigued.