It is really surprising how FoH’s fans had their mind warped after playing so much EverQuest. It’s like brainwashing. They can just rinse, repeat and desire what they’ve been taught, without any hope to recover.

There’s a real masochistic nature, here. From a comment I spotted:

UO had no level system, and very little progression in their skill system. There was thus little barrier to consuming content, making UO a short term game.

Levels (or a good substitute) add a great deal to any game. The key points being the limiting of consumption of content and the game world as a dynamic place through the change of the player.

I mean, for some experienced players who actually understand game mechanics these claims are rather ridiculous and shouldn’t even deserve to be discussed since they are so obviously wrong. But what amazes me (and the reason why I’m writing about this) is the way a game “shaped the perceptions”. EverQuest somewhat damaged the mmorpg space, pretty much as Diablo was able to kill a true “RPG spirit”.

This kind of process is both negative and positive, I think. It can be positive because I see a demonstration of the fact that the players are like “believers without beliefs”. Waiting to be seduced. A good game doesn’t really build on top of previous values, instead it creates them from the void. Those values weren’t there before, but then they exist and they become tangible for so many players. It’s an active power of influence.

About that quote here above, what about publishing books written so small that you get an headache after a couple of pages? This, obviously, in the interest of the writer, the publisher and the reader. Let’s make thing harder just for the sake of it. It’s really a completely warped perception of value and worth. And it’s obviously masochistic from every point of view.

You could argue that the process is positive because it leads to a stronger community (harsh environment, social ties needed) but then it’s kind of obvious that you do not encourage community-building through barriers or processes of selection. While it can work better if you remove those barriers and go for processes of inclusion. Instead of actively going against them.

The point is quite simple. There just isn’t any concrete relationship between a satisfying “progression” and barriers between players and content. That was just a blunt system that stupidified the progression in a simplistic, elementary scheme that was just the bare minimum of an idea that was supposed to develop and evolve from there. It’s like taking the “progression” term and apply it literally, losing completely the idea of what it really meant.

Then it is obvious why EverQuest is considered a game for obsessive-compulsive players. It’s like being a “marine”, you are taught all you need to know and do. From there onward you are supposed to shutdown your brain and just execute instrutions. It’s the obliteration of the “roleplay”, or better: the free will. EverQuest is like the industrial age. People are taught to be cogs and be functional to the system. Do not take initiative, no questions, no doubts, no consciousness. Just an hypnotic repetition that slowly brainwashes you till your mind is shaped to understand and be functional only to those elementary structures.

Where’s the “progress” in this? Where’s the progress in the absolute repetition? In the total absence of the new?

Isn’t “progress” all about creating new dynamics? And where are the new dynamics if the world is so precisely defined and structured that nothing within it can change. Where is the progress if nothing can be learnt or discovered? What a wicked idea of progress is this if it doesn’t include any kind of choice?

This is what amazes me. Not that a game like EverQuest imposed a model that could have been perfectioned, but that it convinced the players to believe in values that are the EXACT OPPOSITE of the truth. A “negative” of the real world. And this is again why I find this process wrong and good at the same time. Wrong because it’s teaching people wrong things and having a strong, negative influence that seem to contaminate and spread more and more, uncontrollably. Good because it’s a demonstration that NOTHING is set and you can easily overthrow this stupid, wicked system if you only try.

It’s an open door. A game can easily build its system of values and shouldn’t worry at all about offering something that the players aren’t used to. Because those values and beliefs are volatile. It’s a kind of space where the strongest founding rule can be blown away in a second. Insects with an inch-sized perspective. I believe that players are ready for “something new”. Just because the traditions we can see and analyze now are so weak and temporary. There’s really little of what we see now that is solid enough to be able to resist for years.

And that’s again the point. What is missing in the mmorpg space is an “opportunity”. The opportunity to try something new that is based on more solid principles and that can work better. The “audience” is irrelevant because right now the public is used to a system so broken that just exists and is strong because… there are no worthwhile alternatives. No other perspectives. A narrow sight that is persisting just because noone is standing up to go open the window.

I mean, the games we have today are a demonstration of a complete lack of faith in the intelligence and perception of the people. As if we believe that the players out there really only understand “progression” as a linear, numeric one shaped as a treadmill and that their brains cannot grasp anything slightly more complex or dynamic. Brainless games because we believe that people don’t have a conscience or the possibility to think with their head, the possibility to learn and discover new things, but just execute the commands they’ve been passed and repeat them endlessly.

If you start with that mindset then, obviously, you can just ruin things with your own hands. Nothing good will came out of that.

I cannot believe there’s so much lack of faith. There isn’t really any reason or motivation to create games if we are doomed like that, if a game is just a way to waste some time.

I don’t see all this as “progression”. In fact that’s the absolute absence of it. And one day I’m sure we’ll all laugh at those silly ideas as we do today when thinking to when people believed that it was the sun to move around the earth.

A matter of perspectives. So young and naive we were.