Icarus Studios News

Design and Implementation

It may seem obvious that community is an important part of the MMO experience—it is a “massively multiplayer” game, after all; but all to often, MMO quests and storylines don’t take the “multiplayer” seriously, much less the “massive.” How many quests in an average MMO could have just as easily been placed in an offline, single-player game? You get a quest, you run it, and on the way, you discover a couple of other people running the same quest. Maybe you group up, meet some people, and share the fun and the rewards. Or, you end up competing for the same goal item, so that only one group can actually complete the quest at that time, and the others are left standing around, waiting for an item or a boss to respawn.

Players are used to this kind of thing and probably even take it in stride by now, but how can designers take the community into account to give players a richer experience—one that takes advantage of the thousands of players sharing the world? Raids and other situations that require multiple players working together are a small step in the right direction, as they get players communicating with one another and cooperating on a common goal that would be too tough for an individual. When players start communicating, it adds breadth and depth to the experience.

The problem with the usual implementation of these quests is that they rarely have any impact outside of themselves. (The same can be said for most single-player quests.) A common single-player quest might sound like “Jim has been having trouble with rats on his pigeon farm. Go over there and kill ten rats to help him out.” On the surface, it makes sense as a quest, as it involves the player in the story world, introduces Jim, and maybe gives a new location for the player to explore. On the other hand, thousands of players will kill rats on Jim’s farm. How many could there possibly be? And why, when wander back through, will players always find more rats? What if all this rat killing led to a change in the game world, so that the players could see the fruits of their labor?

In Fallen Earth, “conflict towns” will provide just this sort of game-play. Its post-apocalyptic landscape is littered with a variety of settlements, some of which are open to rule by one of the six playable factions in the game. If enough players from one faction complete missions in a particular conflict town, the population aligns itself with that faction, and the group gets access to the resources in the area. So if faction members want the advantages that town ownership brings, they’ll have to get in touch with one another and create a plan to organize and take over a specific conflict town. And once they have the town under control, they’ll have a natural, in-game area where they can meet other faction members and interact with them. If another faction hopes to “liberate” a town and make it their own, they’ll have to unify in order to figure out a way to fight such an uphill battle, carrying out quests and working together to oust the current owners. All of a sudden, that little kill-ten-rats quest becomes part of a much larger storyline—one that involves thousands of players, the alignment of a town, and the control of resources that could eventually escalate into faction-versus-faction warfare.

(Continued in Part 2)

-Jason Cisarano, Virtual Worlds Team