I noticed that Aggro Me linked a video with EQ2 players doing crazy jumps around Freeport. It reminded another video that I saw the day before about a totally insane domino setup made in Oblivion.

“Empowering the players”, or: things you cannot do in mmorpgs.

Try for example to do those jump in Guild Wars, or, in the case of the domino example, try to give the players the possibility to dig holes in the terrain. The day after the whole world would be transformed in a Gruyere.

When I was imagining my “dream mmorpg” and thinking about focusing on the interaction, I got the idea of allowing players to “push” each other. Well, a simple feature like this would be already a disaster, but also “magic”. Think for example of sitting near a cliff, watching the panorama. A player passes by and pushes you down the cliff. See ya. It’s already a mini-game!

Add a platform as a limited space, add five players on it and then let them toy with the “push” function to see who’s the last one to remain standing on the platform.

It could be already a fun model that could lead to add some variation in a game and add to the experience. For example those thoughts lead me to imagine the “inferno” zone. A full PvP zone mingled with PvE where squads of players have to move around with flying platforms. Through a simple physics model these platform can bend in a direction (depending on triggers or players’ position) and the inclination would affect the physics model. Add both PvE and PvP combat to this situation and you would have the most crazed experience ever in a mmorpg.

There are lots of possibilities. During WoW’s beta you could create fireplaces to cook stuff, it’s still possible in the game. But during beta these fireplaces had collision on and the players learnt to use them to create absurd piles as ladders to reach unreachable places. I remember insane piles in Ironforge going up to the roof where the gryphon passes right now and people sitting on top of the auction house. The result? Blizzard removed the collision from the fireplaces so that you couldn’t stack them anymore.

While it’s not possible to give the players “control” in a game, all these tools can be extremely innovative and precious *in a mmorpg*. Not in a single-player game. These features aren’t a limit in a cooperative game, they are a potential that must be governed. It’s when you can affect other players that things become interesting, that what you do achieves a meaning. The interaction becomes the focus of the game. A game-world becoming consistent and moving steps away from game-y environments where you can only follow what is strictly part of the game. The overall idea of a “world” as opposed to just a game.

3D is powerful even for that reason. You can look around and turn in the direction you weren’t supposed to look to. Or jump and reach places where you weren’t meant to be.

At the end the driving purpose of these mechanics was the “immersion”. Or the possibility to shape an environment coherently with the expectations of the player. Or: self-consistence.

If it isn’t possible to give the players the control, it’s still viable a modular approach. The video from Oblivion suggested me some interesting possibilities for a “trap system”. Think for example to a PvP environment where the players can conquer territories and castles. It could be possible to build a simple trap system made modular so that a castle would have a number of hook points where you could place triggers and related traps. With a good modularity (different triggers, different traps, linked triggers and traps etc..) it could be easily possible to remove the predictability and obtain a system that still plays within the rules while adding variance to the game. Think about then letting the players set traps in the forests, set alarms and so on.

All these tools would add very little to a single player game, but they could become truly interesting in a game where you have more ways to interact and affect other players. With rules so that these systems cannot be used out of their context.

Adding this type of “variation” and focus to other types of interaction beside combat and enhanced treadmills, are ways to shape an immersive world. Think about going to hunt in a forest, and have the animals not react just to aggro radiuses, but to sound and line of sight, so that you would have to sneak in slowly and pay attention to not scare your prey and let it run away (instead of suddenly charge against you in every case).

These are ways to make the experience richer and more immersive. To create truly interesting and FUN virtual worlds. This is the “variety” I want to see. Consistent and immersive. Not penguins and metaverses.