Bioware MMORPG Details Emerge
Monday November 27, 2006
1UP had a chance to talk to some of the developers at Bioware's Austin studio about several of the upcoming games, including the MMORPG they are working on. The game is still in its formative stages, but they are able to discuss the philosophy behind the design. "The grind is not attractive in any way. Going and killing the same dragon over and over again is not something I want to do. There are lots of different ways to encourage players to move forward. Simply putting more weight on storytelling experience points is a good way to do that. In WOW, you get XP when you finish a quest, but the weighting on that is pretty low; there's not much benefit to doing that over finding the perfect monster to grind and kill. If those quest experience points were a little higher, it would make a lot more sense to go along with the story. Now, that's a very mechanical way to ensure players go along with your story - the other way is to make sure your story is good, that the presentation is exciting, it's personal to the player, that the player has a lot of motivation to move forward in their story." Is a solid storyline the crucial ingredient that's missing from today's MMORPGs?
Comments
Personally, I think MMORPGs are evolving the way that console games have and are. As an avid gamer, I can tell you that players nowadays are demanding ever increasing levels of sophistication. Players want a truly immersive world. WoW achieved that in the short-term but they based their content on old-school concepts of grinding and that gets old after a while. Bioware seems to understand that the next evolution of gaming is going to be moving *away* from grinding and “pez dispenser” NPCs to a living world that is personal and has consequenses.