The last chunk of DAoC’s patch is interesting:

Herding Time!

Three new people have joined the realms of Albion, Midgard, and Hibernia and they have brought a new sport with them – Herding. In Albion, Pig Herder Stanley has taken up residence in the field south-southwest of Humberton. In Midgard, Tomte Herder Rufus has found a home north-northwest of Fort Atla and in Hibernia, Badger Herder Marcus lives next to Howth. The goal of Herding is simple – be the first team to score three points and win a prize!

[…]

This can be directly filed under /fluff. I haven’t checked but I’m pretty sure that some of the players will criticize this: so Mythic is spending time to add idiotic minigames instead of fixing the major issues in the game?

While I currently dislike Mythic as a whole and made a personal promise to never go back (to play) no matter what, I’m still able to appreciate and underline when something good happens.

Their continued work toward the newbie experience is *terribly late* but nevertheless good, this last ‘fluff’ addition is again a good direction from my point of view. It’s time that these game LOSE the focus they have. Add more elements to the game world to make it live, to make it become more interactive. The focus is good to improve the direct potential but shouldn’t become a leading plan. The game world should be improved on different fronts. The fluff is one of those.

Instead I’m critic toward their form of fluff. An isolated minigame is limited in the scope. I’d work toward adding layers of interactivity that aren’t limited to a small arena and a digression from the rest of the game. You achieve a lot more if this fluff is coherent with the rest of the game world and part of it. This fluff needs a legitimation, a ‘promotion’ in relevance.

One of my ideas about my ‘dream mmorpg’ that I still haven’t written in detail on this site and that is directly inspired by Achaea (a wonderful MUD) is a ‘butterfly’ side-game. Not mini-game but side-game. These butterfly could become a possibility of interaction that is coherent with the structure of the rest of the game, in a similar way as World of Warcraft did with the crafting professions.

You can get butterfly nets from special NPCs and then you can wander in a zone to ‘hunt’ the various types of butterflies, from common to the most rare. The idea is to improve what is already in Achaea and build on it thanks to a three dimensional type of interaction. The various butterflies will spawn more or less rarely, will move and swirl at differents speeds and fly at different heights. The fun should come directly from hunting them, using rocks and jumping to hopefully catch those flying too high, tracking one for long, hoping it will climb down a bit and enugh to be at your arm’s range and so on. The type of interaction isn’t anymore casual as in typing a message and obtain random misses, but it will be direct. The players will have to move, jump and use the net at the right time to hopefully catch what they need. Each type of net will have a set maximum capacity and a percent of possibility to loose one or three butterflies each time it’s being swung.

Again this isn’t a restricted mini-game working as a digression but something that adds a new layer to the game. You play normally and occasionally you’ll see a rare type of butterfly you need. Quests can be invented for this, other types of sub games can too, like offering time-based events or direct competitions. The rewards can range from rare ingredients for enchanting to funny (fluff) types of clothes.

Once this whole direction is choosed you can go on and on. You could create associations, build official championships, mantain server-wide ranks and scoreboards. And this can be repeated with a fishing game.

The point is that there’s no limit to what you can do in a mmorpg and there’s no limit to the type of interaction and the fun you can deliver. Still, this is a dream. The games in this genre are flat and psychotically focused on a single mechanic that directly empties the game world of its ‘world’ value. It’s both sad and frustrating.

The point is to keep dreaming. Here what I did was again ‘stealing’ an idea. Achaea has already the concept of catching butterflies but did it directly invent it? No, all this previously existed as much as the fishing games are popular in the “Breath of Fire” serie (Squaresoft games). I already wrote about this, the point is to get the inspiration to add depth, to let the dreams flow. Completely different from stealing ideas and design from better games because you weren’t able to fix and improve the same parts. “Stealing ideas” is common and useful, but as a source, not as an ending point.

A similar topic was discussed here. My comment:

The point isn’t just the humor. The point is to offer something beyond the real focus. Exactly like Raguel says the point is about planning inefficiently. Why SquareSoft is keeping to fill their games with mini-games and fluff stuff? Because that fluff is similar to the toys that Ubiq considered recently.

In the case of a mmorpg we are really trying to give life to a gameworld. These gameworlds feel often too focused, too limited. They are too obsessed by a group of tight dynamics and they do not offer a depth.

This is why I’d focus more on fluff requiring interaction rather than adding humor randomly.

The last stage is to bring the toyetic gameplay where it belongs: the PvP.
Buried in the comments of a Terra Nova article, saved here and introduced here while discussing instanced content.

The point is to have a plan and know exactly where you want to go. The ‘fluff’ will offer some of the best tools to arrive at the destination.