Haven’t We Been Here Before? - Things in Every MMORPG .

Until someone thinks up a more practical way for MMORPGs to function we are always going to see many of the same features over and over again. There are a few MMORPGs out there that broke the mold, though you hardly hear of them anymore as they have faded into obscurity. The truth is, these clichés exist because they work and because people seem to like them as much as they hate them. Let’s take a look at some of the most common things you’ll see in MMORPGs today:

 

The Question Mark

There are many who will say that this trend did not start until World of Warcraft, but there are many who will disagree. Regardless, the question mark is a universal sign for: “I have a quest for you!” No matter who started it first, it has been seen in virtually every MMORPG since WoW and it doesn’t seem to be going away. Believe it or not, it wasn’t always this way. Back in the days of Asheron’s Call and Everquest (Classic), no one had a quest indicator. In fact, you had to simply walk up and talk to every single NPC if you wanted to know anything. Let’s face it, the question mark saves time.

Hello, I’d like to direct your attention to some shit.

In an effort to NOT be like WoW, Everquest 2 actually introduce the ‘Quest Feather’ and ‘Closed Book’ animations above their NPC’s heads. In truth however, we all know what they meant. Guild Wars 2 is one game attempting to get away from the Question Mark cliché, though it did so by eliminating normal questing which may or may not have been a brilliant move. The jury is still out on that one.

You’re not fooling anyone frog man!

Action Bars Galore

If you’ve played an MMORPG then you’ve dealt with the action bar at some point. You would think that over time they would get rid of it, and they have in some cases, but let’s face it, the action bar is your toolbox. It’s your go-to when shit hits the fan, and if they ever completely got rid of it, you wouldn’t know what to do. Now it’s worth noting that in Asheron’s Call they did actually get rid of the action bar when it came to basic melee combat. To say that Asheron’s Call tried to be different would be a bit of an odd statement as it was one of the first MMORPG’s to enter the market. It was preceded by games like Ultima Online and Tibia. But hey, chances are no one remembers Tibia.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it worked this way in real life?

Let’s face it, having action bars is NICE. Having all of your abilities wrapped up in a neat little package for you to toss out at your whim? That works out really well actually. Of course you run into certain problems like cooldowns, as well as that one pesky unlocked bar that causes you to toss one of your actions into the wild blue yonder. Still, action bars are helpful!

 

The Extermination Quest

In almost every MMO to date there has been some kind of extermination quest. Sometimes one is left to wonder if this is a hearkening back to the days of Final Fantasy 1 when your initial ten hours would be spent grinding random innocent creatures in the woods. Okay no, but seriously, at the beginning of every MMO you’re likely sent out into a field to murder ten random creatures. I can think of a few games off the top of my head that do this, let’s see…Everquest 2, Mabinogi, World of Warcraft, Rift, Archlord…am I missing anyone? Oh yes, probably about fifty others that I can’t think of. Did you know that one of the earliest games, Asheron’s Call never actually did this? Their idea of a starter quest was to send you into a random dungeon to find sacks of feed. Seriously.

Well at least they’re standing close together.

To make it even more amusing, all of the creatures you seem to need to kill are just sitting out there, in the open almost as if they’re waiting to die. You would think that they would have other things to do, like rush to their burrows and sleep, but no, they’re out there day and night. Even the sentient creatures are just out there wandering the fields. Because you’re in a low level area they don’t have social aggro, and they don’t even FLEE at the sight of a crazy man rushing into battle with a SWORD against the most helpless of woodland creatures. It becomes even more ridiculous if you’ve decided to play a mage and you’re out there using Area of Effect abilities to torch the field, all in the name of EXP and up to two pieces of copper! It’s like you’ve been sent out to murder a field full of mentally deficient Bambi’s, and it’ll probably be recorded in your quest journal as one of your greatest accomplishments. Let’s try telling that story to a chick in a bar. “Hey baby, let me tell you about the time I set ten rabbits on fire.”

 

The God Complex

Let’s be honest, you’re playing an MMO with at least a thousand other people at any given time, perhaps more if you’re on one of the more popular ones. So why is it that in so many games they declare you the ‘Chosen one’? It kind of loses its effect when you realize that all of the other players around you are also the ‘Chosen One’, immersion breaker. Let’s face it, it can get a bit disheartening to complete a massive raid, feel as if you’ve saved the world, only to walk out of the dungeon and find another group of twenty-five walking in to do the exact same thing you just did. It’s almost like riding a roller coaster, disembarking, and watching the next group of riders get on, though in this case there’s a chance that the next group might actually fall out on one of the loops.

We can do this, we’re all the chosen one(s), right?

War! Huh?

One of the most annoying and unrealistic things you see in any MMORPG is the ‘war’ that never seems to happen. You all know what I’m talking about. You start by talking to some beginner NPC, they tell you how they’ve been at war with this other faction or race, blah blah blah, and then they ask you to run out and kill half of the opposing army, which, you do, because you’re the ‘chosen one’. What’ s amusing is that no matter how much you play and no matter how far you advance the storyline, that ‘war’ is never going to happen! It honestly doesn’t matter, they’re just going to sit on opposite sides, possibly within sight of each other, and never do a thing.

A Closer Look

So you know that they exist, and you know that they can be annoying. This is especially true if you’re just starting a new game and you find it to be nearly a carbon copy of the one you were JUST playing. Here’s the thing though, these things exist because people, developers in particular, haven’t found a way to do certain things better. Many experiments have been tried, and quite a few have been abject failures. As we move into the future however, we are going to see far better games that may be more reaction based. It’s hard to say what we might see in the future as MMO’s mature and truly come into their own, but we can say that it has been a privilege to watch the evolution of the MMORPG over the past two decades.