What I Want From Blizzard
Let me throw up one final Blizzard-related game post. With their bags of cash and legions of fanboys Blizzard is a company that can, more or less, get away with anything in the video game sector. Here’s what I want to see them do.
I want them to make a sci-fi, guided MMO - it could be in the Starcraft universe or a new IP - that’s a reasonable mix of twitch and skill and that features extensive ground and space areas. If Blizzard did that then, to me, all of their past transgressions would be forgiven.
For those of you who read that second paragraph and said, “what the hell is he talking about?” I will briefly explain. I want Blizzard to make an MMO, a persistent world, but I don’t want them to make a traditional MMO. Most MMO’s exist in a state of dull stasis where nothing really interesting happens because it’s important to ensure that all content is available to all players at all times. In effect nothing ever actually happens in the world of an MMO. When I say that I want a “guided MMO” I mean that I want a game where the developers are actively participating in moving the fiction of the game world forward based on the actions of the playing (and paying) population.
The danger there is that new players could be “in the lurch” without having had participated in all of the previous events. That’s easily remedied. Offer a single player component for new players that runs them through the major game world events while at the same time giving them a chance to get to grips with the gameplay mechanics. They could also offer “holodeck” style replays of certain key events if anybody wanted to relive a past triumph.
Ground and space areas - well that’s pretty self explanatory. See, this is what I want to do in a sci-fi MMO. I want to walk around a nifty sci-fi city, go to a space port, get into my spaceship, fly into space, fly around space, dock at a space station and then get out of my space ship and walk around a nifty sci-fi space station. Also, they need to have player-controlled capital ships.
Now for the important part - it should be twitch and skill based. See, a traditional World of Warcraft MMO is skill based. You build your character’s skills by grinding xp in massive, dull play sessions in order to win in PvP by having a higher level character with “uber loots.” Something like Counter Strike is twitch base - you have to move really fast and actually be good at it in order to succeed. There is a happy medium between those two gameplay styles and Blizzard is in a position to find it. Go forth and compromise, Blizzard!
Oh, and as a final note - and final nail in the coffin of anything like this ever being created by Blizzard or, for that matter, any other MMO company - the whole thing should be decidedly not loot based.
There. I’m done talking about Blizzard.
Sphere It
Great post Tom, I’ve been trying to find the right words to describe my feelings about Blizzard and WoW lately, but you beat me to it, probably did much better than I could anyway.
Allow me to indulge myself for a moment, however. What I want from Blizzard, since they’re so pleased with reusing their old IP’s, is a puzzle game for the DS. It would be great, smart puzzles, the excellent humor the company is known about, and the DS’s interface would work wonders with it.
It could be about Vikings. And get this! These vikings would be abducted by aliens. And then they’d be Lost. For good measure, the game should have the number “3″ in its title, because good things come in threes. (I’ve no idea what that last sentence is about.)
Although I would renew my WoW account for a week and murder a Night Elf Hunter if we could get a twitch-based MMO, from Blizzard or anyone else.
Comment by George K — July 12, 2008 @ 3:22 pm
Hmmm, a game about Vikings who are Lost? Interesting concept. If only some exciting new game developer with a strong storytelling pedigree could actually craft that project.
You know, recently I’ve been wondering about integrating an MMO into the real world using the proliferation of relatively powerful data and GPS enable mobile devices.
Comment by Tom — July 12, 2008 @ 3:35 pm
That should be interesting. Care to elaborate a little more on that?
Comment by George K — July 12, 2008 @ 6:17 pm
See, that’s the thing - it’s sort of difficult to visualize how that would work. Do you use absolute GPS positions and relate them to game locations? Inject a fiction of a virtual world that exists “on top” of the real world making a real world location correspond to a virtual location? You would have to map real locations into the game and you would limit your player base to people in certain geographical areas. Possibly, as foolish as this sounds, an MMO that takes place entirely in the real world?
The thing is that you’re bringing in so many more variables when you start talking about having people go to real places - and so much more liability. What if someone is going to a certain location for some quest and gets injured or killed? That wouldn’t bode well for the continued success of the game.
Rather then something where you require the players to be active, what about something along the lines of the conspiracy-theory orientated psuedo-ARG Majestic they released back in ‘00? It was discontinued after 9/11 because they were concerned that people might take the phone calls and emails seriously in the new environment but it’s an idea that could come back.
You know what? I’ll write something up in Google Docs we can start working on.
Comment by Tom — July 12, 2008 @ 7:03 pm