MMO Exploration Depth Leaving Players Pining for RPGs?

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Heh, anyone like what I did with the title? Exploration? Pining? Geddit? (EDIT: Apparently no one does. It was a tree joke, what with them being outside and all.)

Anyway, here's a snippet from an article by Jim Rossignol for RockPaperShotgun, a gaming website, regarding whether the variety and depth found within MMOs means players miss the integrating story that usually accompanies with RPGs.

(Refering to Oblivion)
A priestess of some kind was hunting and using magic to kill deer. I could ignore it, or go up to her and talk. The choice was mine. It didn’t matter, but it was still there. It was then that I got the same kind flash of freedom that Tom had done on coming out of the sewers. It’s a game that charms you with its breadth from those earliest minutes in its open world.

I sometimes wish it (spatial exploration) was mandatory. Exploring has has long been one of the most important things for me in gaming. Elite, Midwinter, Armourgeddon, Outcast - there’s been a history of games I’ve wanted to play just to wander around in their landscapes. I often play games just to see the architecture. I was a tourist in Everquest 2, and couldn’t play Dark Age Of Camelot because the buildings were too dull. The main reason I log into Second Life is to fly around looking at peculiar structures and half-finished castles in the sky. I would quite happily have played World Of Warcraft if it had been an empty landscape with nothing to do but wander around exploring. In fact, I would probably have enjoyed that even more.

The full article can be found here.

 

I would *love* to see a game where exploration is a major focus and rewarded in some way.

One of the things that drew me into RPGs was this sense of exploration. That's why the early to mid Ultimas were so great. There was a real sense of finding new, undiscovered lands.

I like Bioware's games, but the gameplay mechanics makes exploration a limited affair. Whether it's BG or NWN, the exploration is only within local area. No sense of a real world.

Some PWs (like Layonara) try to model a living world, and make a lot of interesting areas which are realistically connected. But then the creatures and encounters are so tough, exploration becomes a life threatening activity, not a fun, rewarding pastime.

Morrowind has this type of exploration in a way, but the horrid fighting mechanic, bad conversation system, and cookie cutter NPCs really detract from the excitement of finding a new area.

I don't like WOW in general, but a no-fighting, trade and exploration version might just tempt me.

-D

 

While I agree with the staements made in this, there is an inherent problem with the entire thing. It assumes that MMO's are like an RPG in terms of gameplay, and they are not. The gameplay that make a successfull MMO is not the same type of gameplay to be found in an Oblivian or NWN. Its apples and oranges here. You dont have to like the MMO gameplay but to judge it in terms of RPG gameplay is foolish. Its like saying you would have liked Starcraft better if it had been more like Baldurs Gate 2 in gameplay. They are just two diffrent things.
I happen to love WOW and NWN and Morrowind. I can get diffrent (and in MHO satifying) gameplay from each game. I dont find that becasue WOW lacks the things that make NWN great that it is a bad game . I get two diffrent types of gameplay and thats fine. I dont expect, and nor should I, every game to serve all my gaming needs.

 

I agree that a game where exploration is the major focus can be great fun. However, while I love the early/mid Ultima games, I do feel that exploration in them was not that well rewarded. Especially in the Ultima 1-5, the dual-scale world made the game seem huge, but that was largely an illusion. Besides, even though you could explore to your heart's content, there was nothing to see outside of the specific locales that are important to the game, and you know where most of these are just by glancing at the map that came with the game. In some ways I think the Might and Magic games encouraged exploration more, especially M&M6; there were various goodies (items, chests, fountains, etc) hidden around the world and that made it worthwhile to explore every foot of terrain. I've not played any MMORPG to great length, but I always felt things were too randomised and that detracts significantly from the joy of exploration, especially if item-finding it scaled to character level (though that's also the case in some single player RPGs as well)