In establishing a world story

In establishing a world story, game developers have four roads open to them. The most common is to neglect it altogether, beyond the establishment of a back-story. A second method, as championed by AC and discussed last time, is to have a strong story but have it strictly controlled by the devs. The opposite decision, as employed by EVE is to have no running story at all and leave everything in the hands of the players. This is a courageous choice, because who knows what players are capable of, yet it is still only a thin veil hiding the reality that this is just another means of ignoring a world story. I say this because even EVE can't escape the need for NPCs (albeit in limited roles). Nor do they give full control over to the players in the sense that someone who starts as an Amarr cannot defect from the Amarr Empire and join the Gallente Federation. Nor can the Caldari as a people align with the Amarr or the Brutor tribe rise up against the remainder of Minmater. In a world of true player control, all of these would be possible.

This leads to the final model: a hybrid of shared player and developer control over a living storyline. The story starts with the devs (they created the world history after all), but the events that unfold in the game are not locked in a prearranged sequence. Instead, the chapters ahead are unknown and players can influence what unfolds, even on the highest level. So how can players feel they are gaming in a dynamic world and how can they influence the story of that world? It can occur in many ways, on many levels of complexity and depth.

Remember last time when I referred to events taking place in our real world and our awareness of them, even if we aren't directly involved? This basic concept remains missing from most MMOs. Take, for example, WoW's PvP arena matches. Not being a big PvPer myself, I haven't been directly involved in them. I'm only aware of it when I hear players spamming global chat for partners in the competition. In a way, this is the "sport" of an MMO world. Wouldn't it make sense that there would be billboards in the major cities that could advertise the lead contestants? Why do the NPCs that wander the streets of Stormwind only regurgitate the same meaningless blather over and over when they could serve a more practical and realistic role by saying such things as "Did you see the fight between so-and-so and so-and-so? That troll was butchered like a murloc!" Not only would this put actual game events into the mouths of NPCs, it's also a way to give recognition to the contestants that do well.

Assuming you actually have a game that changes over time, this concept could be expanded. AC used town criers to advertise new events. That worked for dev changes and was a good idea. It should work for player changes too. To use another WoW example, why don't the NPCs at Refugee Point talk about who is winning on the Arathi Basin battleground? Warhammer Online uses a slide bar to show regional Realm control. While practical, it isn't particularly immersive. Couldn't NPC dialogue be driven in part by who is winning?

Another level of reality can be gained by adding geographical locations that emphasize the changing face of the world. Most games do this to some degree already. In WoW, I got a kick out of visiting Grom Hellscream's Tomb not to mention dozens of other scenes of destruction from the previous three RTS games. LOTRO has its stone trolls, the famous Prancing Pony Inn, along with a myriad of other sites from Tolkien's novels. These are nice touches, but again I've got to say that AC has the best examples. This isn't because of some obsession with AC, but rather because it is a prime example of a game that has no previous IP. The reason for this potency in the storytelling sense is that the locations you encounter in AC you don't necessarily understand. If you've played the previous Warcraft games, you don't wonder who Grom Hellscream was. Nor do you wonder why the three stone trolls in LOTRO are standing in the forest near the road to Rivendell. But when you wander past the long straight line of statues in the middle of the AC desert near Tufa, you wonder what they are, how they got there, and why they were built. When you see the thousands of skeletons lying around the Hill of Pines, you wonder what battle happened there. These aren't just encounters with history, but with the unknown and that makes the world real and mysterious. Games which build off of old IP will have a much harder time achieving the sense that there are new things for players to discover.

12:10 - 2008-Dec-29