MMORPG Extension
May 8, 2008 – 3:27 pm
It’s all fine and good to play your MMORPG of choice at home on a PC or Mac (if you’re a sadist), but what about when you’re on the metro, in some Internet cafe, or at work waiting for your drafts to be approved? How can today’s developers extend your MMORPG experience beyond the normal log-in session? Why would they even want to?
The “why” part is easy enough. Giving players the opportunity to explore rich content and accomplish “small” in-game tasks from the outside will simply perpetuate their MMORPG addiction and enhance the all-around experience. The most successful games are the ones that can sustain peoples’ excitement and imagination from the first few seconds after waking up until the last remaining seconds before falling asleep. It may not be healthy, but hey, they have Wii Fit if you’re into that kind of crazy lifestyle! 
I’ve actually had dreams of hunting cartoonish people as a Pyro from Team Fortress 2. Not in a bad way of course, but in a fun, comical, and crispy way! I may have issues…
The “how” part may be slightly more complicated, however, I think these are some creative ideas that will keep people plugged in, on imagination/immersion overload, even when they’re not logged in to the game in the traditional sense.
- Web tracking - The first game to properly implement this was Mythic’s Dark Age of Camelot. They not only used their community site, The Camelot Herald, for frequent communication with players, they also tracked in-game stats and served up several XML feeds so people could share the information on personal Web sites.
- War info - People want to know how their side is faring on the battlefield, so a Web site that tracks up-to-date information (refreshed every 5-minutes or so) on scenario, battlefield objective, keep, and city siege would be insanely popular. It would also be great if they stored the last 24-hours this information so people could watch an animation of how zone control switched hands throughout the day.
- Character info - Public MySpace-like profiles of each character would be a huge hit. At their core, MMORPGs are a great example of social networks (Facebook, Bebo, Orkut, etc.), so it makes sense to take the logical next step. Porting each character’s personal Tome of Knowledge and a WoW Armory-like character sheet would keep people entertained for hours.
- Living Guilds 2.0 - WAR is taking the guild experience to the next level with their Living Guild system, but it can be taken even further. Similar to online character profiles, why not automate profiles for guilds that are populated with all the real data you’d find in game? Out-of-game guild management is currently a manual process that can be enhanced by hosting services like MMO Guildsites, Guild Launch, Guild Cafe, and Guild Portal, but it’s still a fairly intensive process. Alternatively, MMORPGs could start importing and exporting guild data via XML that could allow these services to enhance their offerings. Wouldn’t it be cool to chat with your in-game guild from Firefox?
- Cell phone (mobile) mini-games - Imagine you could access certain parts of your character and his or her environment via Blackberry, iPhone, or a Web browser…
- Virtual market - It’s entirely possible for developers to allow your character to interact with the in-game marketplace from a mobile location. You could have access to your cash, inventory, mailbox, merchants, and even the auction house. This would allow you to buy, sell, and trade in-game items from anywhere in the world.
- Crafting - Let’s face it… a lot more of us would craft if we didn’t have to waste so much valuable in-game time doing it. It seems quite feasible that we could have a Flash-interfaced mini crafting game available on mobile devices. Most crafting systems are so robotic, simple, and repetitive that the mechanics behind them shouldn’t be too difficult to program for a cell phone. 555-1234 - Woohoo! You just made a silk glove. *Snore*
- Gambling - I think this would be a huge hit. Use your character’s in-game cash to gamble with! They could make unique, immersive games or give us the classics like Blackjack and Poker! Heck, I’d love to play Orbs vs. other people for in-game gold!
Extensions like these will likely drive up the monthly subscription fees but I think the added value is well worth it. Would you pay more for to extend your MMORPG experience? Can you think of any alternatives?
3 Responses to “MMORPG Extension”
More data feeds! More data feeds that could allow sites to enrich what they offer (like you say) would be fantastic. I hope the new WAR site will have a lot of new functionality and take things to the next level. It’ll also be interesting to see if they can shoehorn any Rupture functionality into the WAR site…or if they will at all.
By QforQ on May 8, 2008
Agreed!
By Snafzg on May 9, 2008