The difference between an MMO and RPG/tabletop

[drizzeth]

I have always been a fan of Fantasy, legends, myths.
So as soon as i descovered them i loved adventure/rpg and tabletop AD&D games
I think i was about a 9 year old playing text based adventures on my C64, as basic was so simple, i even made 2 text based adventures myself on that C64

Then came Monkey Island and Monkey Island2, Zork (the graphical one), Myst, 7th Guest and AD&D PC game Stone Prophet among other less name worthy games lol.These are both adventure(most of them) and RPG games(Zork and Stone Prophet)

By the time i was playing Stone Prophet i also found out about Advanced Dungeons & Dragons(tabletop) I loved it and so did my friends, we had a sessions at least one day a week and it was great!

After that i tasted Daggerfall and some years later Morrowind, in other words, The Elder Scrolls series. They are brilliant single player RPG games, the best I ever played on a machine. Ofcourse i also played Neverwinter Nights, being based on D&D gamerules and world setting.

I got tired of playing a great game ad then having to uninstall and buy the next generation of that game and start over again, wouldnt it be great to find an RPG that is more a persistant world? Where yo could stay for longer as a single player game, ultimately a virtual world to live a Fantasy/RP double life? To maybe even become an element that matters in that world? To impact events and all that? To be able to do that with your friends?

That made me wish for a good MMORPG, i never played those till Ryzom and after i tasted Ryzom I loved it and went tasting most of the other MMO's out there. Expecting singleplayer content greatness and flavour of backgound stories and al that in a persistant world that evolves through player economy and politics. A world great of lore and mysteries to uncover, a world rich of goals and lives possible.

From playing Ryzom(the game it is in the versions running on the retail server, not what is planned) ad other MMO's ive found that that combination of RPG greatness in flavour and background story and massive content(for a reference to what content is, play Elder Scrolls its all the stuff that hasent got anything to do with leveling all the great and minor detail stuff) and it being a persistant world doesnt really excist. Some how an MMO is annother type of game as a massive multiplayed RPG game is what i found.

What hapened to living stories and picking up some xp on the way, not even minding your xp? I played AD&D and NWN and Elder Scrolls games without watching any XP progression, i was livinhg stories, doing quests, living a RP-ed life which formed my charachter, made him evolve into a more powerfull from of himself until he reached demigod status or something such.

MMO's mostly want to keep the players " busy" " entertained" by levels and level progression, suddenly level progression is the all important factor ingame and im talking about the game making it like that, not a player thinking its important. (needing level 20-smething in craft to even dress yourself, level 50 or better 100 to play events, level 100-150 to play rites/quests that are more then fed-ex, and well if you like traveling and exploring on your own and your such a bad sneak as i am, level 250 to do that and max dp anyway roflol)

I come from game systems where requirements are mechanisms inplace to keep you from wielding the most powerfull weapon there is before the game balanceing allows it. So things like weapons, Armor and magical items of any kind (yes even magical cola machines lol) had a requirement to keep you from wrecking the game balance, not for keeping you busy for ages until you can taste some minor content.

Depth, i havent seen any quest that had any real depth yet in an MMO, i did however have seen many funny quests and many quests with a little more flavor as your general fed-ex missions (most of those in Anarchy Online)
Rites in Ryzom seem to have mostly funny or nice flavour stories, that was one of the 1st things i thought doing them: Would be great to have all missions and rites wich at least that much of really nice flavour stories.

So why is it that an MMO tends to be more like a sandbox for players to connect to and either play and make castles with friends, or have them beat the castles of their opponets back to sands with their plastic shovels?

Personally i dont think and MMO is a great platform to RP, not compared to games like tabletop and maybe R2, depeding what it will become or in anyway NWN modules and player run persistant worlds in NWN.
Why? Because the players and DM(dungeon master, story teller) have no way of impacting the world and events in them.
Ofcourse you can have RP guilds and rollplay all you like, but its not going to impact events of the world, where doing that on tabletop or NWN-like game mechanism modules on a persistant world would.
An MMO is albout playing part in a world that has been made up already, a history that has been made up already, and a planned line of future events that has been globaly made up already. It is all about having yourself entertained by the vision of the game author.

So a great MMO will be one with a rich and i really mean RICH stoy(backgound, history and future) one being shaped by the actions of the players that have a chance to rollplay according to the vision of the game author and have their rollplaying influence the world so they feel part of it, so it feels like a world more then a sandbox. Also RICH with content, minor funny things, flavour stories, flavour quests, quests that matter, quests that dont, quests that are unique even. If you cant do this as a company, give players the tools to place quests in a bazar kind of ingame forum, wanted posters anyone for PR killings?

My point is, when are MMO's going to reach the flavour and depth of games like the Elder Scrolls and AD&D? When for example the D&D system is from the 1970's it has been evolved and matured (and now wrecked by Wizards of the Coast lol) to a great system, a world/universe. Its not something new i ask, i ask to use al that evolution of RP(G) gaming and make it into that game we al want, i dont think it is hard to find what the majority of players are looking for, a market that isnt fulfilled, only by promises so far.