Less Grind, More Story

It's because my Night Elf Thistletoes has stalled in the mid-40s in Stranglethorn Vale that I can heartily agree with Richard Garriot, who commented in his keynote at the Develop Conference, "The obsession with damage inflicted over time as the mechanic behind combat reduces games to data management... The fact that people use the nomenclature 'grinding' to describe what they do in online games is a bad sign. Missions have been reduced to taking the next pellet from the slot machine."

And you know, reports are that Tabula Rasa is not looking that bad. And it sounds like - with the targeting system and the reduced HUD - that they are going for a more mainstream, less MO-focused audience. More actiony, perhaps, than usual for an MMO.

I also like that it's NOT MEDIEVAL FANTASY. Seriously. I am, yes, a dork, but I've spent too many hours messing about with trolls and elves now and at this point I'm ready to leave them behind. So the former Lord British's transformation to General British (will he turn his castle into a giant alien ship?) suits me just fine.

But Sci-Fi, while I do love it, is also a bit of a beaten path in gaming, and one - with a few exceptions - I could never really get into. EVE Online is cool and all but didn't speak to me, didn't warm the cockles of my heart; one of my all-time favorite RPGs was Fallout, and although I liked the setting, it was really the writing and the humor and the missions that set that game apart.

What would I like to see? Obviously, a historically themed MMO. Ancient Rome. Premodern Japan. Victorian Era London. Cold War era Berlin. All of these setting would be rich with potential for character development, for faction-on-faction tension, for drama and intrigue and hunting and fun.

Why is it that so many MMOs have to be fantasy-themed?

Comments

[shin]

Actually I've seen historically themed MMO with Asian elements (well, they still had magic) and then there is this http://www.roma-victor.com/ for Ancient Rome. ;)

I totally agree that MMOs must solve grinding and the uselessness of quests instead of just advertising they are better than their competition when it comes to this. Who cares that there _is_ indeed a storyline when you have to do mostly fetch quests/kill x of this and that mob and grind for dozens of hours in between bits of it?

As a side note on MMO faulty designs, leveling your skills by using them sounds so great, but it only works well in single player RPGs. In a MMO it means some classes have to play twice as much time as those who can use their skills during normal leveling or lag behind people in their current party. I was very much against cheating, bug exploiting and afk leveling till I had to press a button for 1000 times just to get a buff to level 2. Of 10. With less xp/click every level. This is worse than normal grinding (as it adds to it, not replace it), it's simply insane.