On rushing in MMOs

[manavortex]

(...) perhaps I've just played so many MMOs at this point in my life that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is nothing to be gained by rushing to the level cap day one. That no matter what, we all hit the end of the current content and sit around waiting for the next wave, so why take your time and enjoy the ride along the way.

That guy is talking about WOW, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have a point.

[Aethelwolfe]

Oh, Mana dear, how often and how long I've remarked, ranted, and written disquisitions on this very topic. Not because I necessarily believe people *should* be taking their time, my Magistrix friend who giggles.....no, it's not that.

The reason people run through the content is because scripted quests don't belong in online games. Rather, they're not online game content - they're content of games you play online.

When the game launched I'd brought along a large group of friends from Ultima Online along to try it. Paul Sage was, at that time, the Creative Director for ESO. He, and his then wife Amy, had been on the original UO design team. I knew Paul. Certainly this would be the game he'd always wanted to make...oh dear....

"What are all these QUESTS doing here?" one of them asked.

Most weren't asking....they were pissed. "I want to slap the asshole trying to force these quests down my throat," he said. "I want to slap the bastard 'till he's dead. Then I want to slap his corpse. Then I want to drop my pants and fuck this jerk in his dead goddamned ass!" 

Uh....they didn't hang around long 

Not a one of them had played World of Warcraft. And, if they hadn't played that, they certainly weren't going to stand for this. No NPC gets to tell YOU where to go and what to do. That's not what an NPC is for. Two of them tried to build characters in Cyrodiil but they were soon over-matched by players who had power-leveled past them in the safe zones.

Soon I was the only one left.

Long way of saying that to enjoy the content you have to want the content. 

Paul Sage understood that his mission was not to create an online game at all. Rather it was to create an interactive single player game that people could play with other people at the same time - people who VERY MUCH WANTED the content.

But he too left when he couldn't get a single digital community feature implemented - in this case, the Justice System was the last straw. Digital community features allow the game to be influenced by the players, even shaped by the players as a community. They are features in a digital world that enable the development of communities that mirror those in the physical one.

Instead they ended up with this....

Basically they ended up with Aleppo in Daggerfall.

But I don't believe THIS community truly wants digital community features. And with this later day game crowd they could well backfire.

Me, I grew to enjoy come of the scripted content. I'm posting a series now on another site of my favorite NPCs from some of my favorite canned quests. I feel they began to really get it right with Wrothgar too.

Yet I never hurried....not even through the quests that weren't really quests, or through the ones I didn't really care for. Me...I either do it or don't do it. I may complain about it, but if I do something I do it 

[Mallepele]

Well, I never played WoW, but I must totally agree on the topic on rushing levels...it is really a sad thing if you just go and play a game and ask "how can I level up fastest"
Because you just miss so much atmosphere and the whole point of the game, I hope the "One Tamriel" mechanic of everything scaling your level will change that, but I have my doubts, because it seems like only max level or at least the highest equipment level (CP160) is acceptable to most players
Its like "Lets get max level, and THEN we can start to play the game"....sad but true, but I think thats the mechanics of an MMO imho
I also have to agree on Aethelwofle, that ESO is more like an hybrid between an MMO and a single-player quest game, which basically results of ESO beeing the successor of TES5-Skyrim, the goal of the delevopers was to get MMO players and TES-players to play this game, and therefore they had to make that compromise
And well, the justice system is a justice system of a single player game...ofc it becomes ridiculous in an MMO, with respawning NPCs
What I would really like would be if there would be some more EVE-Online mechanics in this game (to be honest I just tested EVE-Online for 3 weeks, because I really liked the idea of a game nearly totally beeing influenced by the players...but I quit because it was just too much an economic simulation for me and I just didn't find the joy in it, BUT I really liked the idea behind it)

But I'm not sure if such thing is possible in this game (it would be nice if there would be at least one zone where there are "digital community features") but I habe my doubts...

[Aethelwolfe]

It feels sad or even wrong when folks find no meaning whatsoever in something you found memorable and even, at times, touching. 

The writing in ESO is very good at times. The core quest in Wrothgar, with its plot twists, wonderful characters, reduced word count, and reduced dramatic-fucking-pauses in NPC speeches, showed they were finally getting it to some degree. They'd need to cut the word count by at least 70% in the rest of the game for it to fit the rhythm of a contemporary game player.

But, again, it's not online game content. People rush to get to the online game. They've got these static story quests shoved in their way as motive friction. Thus the rush approach makes perfect sense if you came to play an online game.

For them....really....I don't think they're missing anything by rushing. I'm not convinced the rush-through crowd is interested in the atmosphere or lore of Elder Scrolls. They look at multiplayer games as more an electronic sport than an alternative digital world to live in part of the time.