Pumping Irony

I’ve been considering this for awhile now, and the discussion thread for Virgin Worlds #87 brought it to a head when both Jerry from DDOcast (I’m guessing that’s Jerry?) and I made comments which Brent wrote he’d address in #88 which just came out today. As a side note, I would like to announce that Brent is among the very privileged few who have ever managed to pronounce my nickname properly! Kudos (and thanks) to Brent!Brent feels DDO is a diversion from the MMO genre, and I tend to agree. In a post from last month, James from Kill Ten Rats asked why I classified DDO as an MMORPG but not Guild Wars when they both shared many of the same mechanics. How about this: both are non-persistent multiplayer online games? I still need to put some thought into how I want to describe the two but since DDO is using the subscription model it tends to get lumped into the MMORPG category (interestingly, so does GW) but with the very face of what defines “massively multiplayer” rapidly changing all around us, many of us may be forced to alter our own paradigms or we risk becoming obsolete by our own hands.

My original comment on #87 asked why bash repeatable quests while praising repeatable dungeon or raid content? That was the ultimate point I was hoping Brent would get into but unfortunately didn’t touch, but rather expressed his disappointment or dislike for DDO’s lack of a persistent world (or… a world for that matter) to just go out, explore or grind mobs. Hey, I’m with him on that. As I’ve already written a few times so far, I’m a huge on exploration. I’m also huge on new and unique experiences, and that above all else is why I’m enjoying DDO — the actual adventures in there just haven’t been seen (perhaps simply cannot be done?) anywhere else so I’m willing to forgo the persistent, open and explorable world in order to have the overall adventure experience.

Feel free to disagree with me, many on the MMORPG.com forums have, but my take on DDO is that it emulates the old RPGA events where you’d bring your own D&D character to play it. The events had a set time limit (DDO does not but so far the quests, dungeons and raids seem relatively short) and the content was pre-written by whomever is hosting or GMing that adventure, and typically allows little or no deviation from the script. In DDO’s case, Turbine is the GM and has created each adventure individually tailored in its own instanced dungeon or wilderness area. I play through the adventure, my character might get some xp or loot, and maybe I take him over to someone else’s table for another adventure or I go home and come back next month. Now, let’s say I come back the following month. Lo and behold, I see that the GM from last month is running an adventure again. He did a good job, I had fun, so I’ll get a slot at his table. In doing so, I’m accepting that he may in fact be running the same adventure as last month, which I’ve already done. I can then choose to continue, and hopefully not spoil everyone else’s time, or bow out and do something new.

The scenario I just described has been the essence of my (limited, I’ll admit) experience in DDO. Yes, I can repeat anything I want to. But no, I absolutely do not have to. Certainly DDO gives some incentive to repeat quests by having unlockable difficulty levels which increase the xp and loot tables and give a certain amount of Favor (DDO’s version of faction or reputation) however each time you repeat it, the xp it will give you drops significantly until eventually you get nothing out of it other than loot from a chest or the end reward. Perhaps it still gives favor even after the xp stops? Not sure, I’m nowhere near that point. A knowledgeable DDO veteran is more than welcome to slap me around and enlighten me as to how things really work… (just be gentle? )

I’ve read so many players bash DDO’s repeatable quest design in forums and blogs, yet those same players then rush off to WoW or EQ2 because it’s raid night. Someone, by all means, please explain the difference? I’ve been to many a raid and have many a tee-shirt to show for it and “gear progression” arguments aside, it’s all the same to me. Either way, I have repeatable and unfortunately, static, content that I need a group to complete. When it’s all over, maybe my character got some cool loot, maybe he got nothing but someone else in the group got some cool loot. The only real difference is that for raids I have to wait several days before I can repeat it. Which is fine because it will take that many days to farm enough mats for the next one and enough gold to afford my repairs from the one I just finished. Seriously readers, I’d love to hear your own thoughts on the matter provided they’re not simply “I don’t like DDO” bashes but rather sticking to the real question: why is repeatable quest content (DDO and otherwise) a Bad Thing™ yet repeatable dungeon and raid content is a Good Thing™?

I’ve seen repeatable quests in a few other MMO’s as well. Vanguard comes to mind — I’ve already encountered a couple repeatable kill quests and for crafters it seems that we can repeat work orders until our brains turns to mush. I’m a bit hazy but I vaguely recall in WoW that a blue question mark icon over an NPC indicated a repeatable quest? Feel free to correct me on that one. Now, I’ll freely admit that those particular repeatable quest types make perfect sense, and when it comes to reputation grinding I wish there were more actual quests I could repeat rather than literally grinding ad infinitum with nothing tangible to show for it or to even motivate me to continue the grind. But I submit that within the RPGA-esque context which I view DDO, those repeatable quests also make perfect sense in that environment. If you come to DDO with pre-conceived notions of How Things Should Be™ then of course you’ll be disappointed. Same for Guild Wars — those who play GW expecting the same experience as EQ2 or WoW or any other traditional MMORPG are, in my opinion, coming in with the wrong mindset and once again will be disappointed or put-out. Additionally, by viewing all MMO’s (and pseudo-MMO’s, MMO-Lite or whatever category we end up putting DDO, Guild Wars and likely Tabula Rasa into) with such narrow, we’re also limiting our experiences and will never be able to appreciate or even see what unique and good experiences those non-conformist titles may in fact offer.

One final comment which is perhaps somewhat relevant to the content of this article: We hear so many arguments of Casual vs. Hardcore. What about those who are somewhere in between? I’d say DDO might be a good match for the so-called Middlecore; those who used to be hardcore and still have the hardcore skills and desires but who only have casual time to spend. DDO lets you login, get a group, and you’re in an instance (normal or raid) with a similarly rewarding overall experience, but one that fits into your more limited time constraints.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 10:36 am and is filed under MMO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.