» Tue Apr 20, 2010 10:01 pm
I am going to say what I've always said on this matter. I haven't read the whole thread, and for that I apologize, I might be repeating something that has already been said.
I can totally understand what people who want it to be a MMORPG have on their minds. They imagine, well, Oblivion with other players, a beautiful, breathing, alive world. Yes, it is true, we wouldn't have to deal exclusively with AI, we would have real intelligence behind those characters, hurray! Sounds great in concept, eh? But then, when you stop to think about it, it wouldn't work as well as expected. In fact, that's what people thought RPGs would be like when brought to a massive online audience at first, but look at what happened. It's nothing like that.
For me the first thing that comes to mind on this matter is that "MMORPG" is almost the opposite to "Non-linear gameplay". Some might be asking why? It's very simple, in fact, a MMORPG has certain restrictions that are innate to any massive game, and such restrictions by themselves would already be a no-no to any TES player.
Let's picture a massive Oblivion. Do you actually believe that you would get to steal from other people, kill NPCs and cause the mayhem that you could in Oblivion? Nope. By the moment you stole from another player, he would go to the forums crying that he lost his +28 Full Plate of Truthiness, the one which he spent ten hours straight hunting to acquire. In a few days it would be like a gazillion people whinning on the forums, and developers would obviously have to remove the ability to steal from players. From now on thieves would only get to steal from a few select NPCs! Oh ain't that great? Thieves that don't actually steal from anyone. This wouldn't be the first time such a thing would happen, it's already happened before to other MMORPGs, and all of them had the same fate.
Okay, so now you wander through the Imperial City. You enter "The Copious Coinpurse". You find that Breton merchant too annoying and well, whatever reasons you had, it turns out that you ended up killing her. A player got mad, since he wanted to buy some new gear, and he then goes to the forums to whine about how merchants are being killed. Well, since this isn't your game, you can't just kill non-respawnable NPCs as you will, so you would end up having to face the annoying respawning breton everyday anyways. Or you simply would lose your ability to kill anyone you want to - wait, that's easier isn't it?
I could spend a year here talking about how every little small thing that you could do in Oblivion wouldn't happen in a TES MMORPG. And such small things make TES what it is. I enjoy having my freedom, I don't want to have it revoked from me so that I would have to share the game with 5000 other players simultaneously, because well, I don't even want that in the first place!
Why not? Do you enjoy combat as it is in Oblivion? Just say goodbye to it if they make a massive game out of the series, it's impossible in a MMORPG. For latency issues, you can't just slash, jump and dodge as you could in Oblivion. Also your spells and arrows would probably miss their targets due to lag. So it would most likely turn out to be an auto-attack game as World of Warcraft, now isn't that magnificent? I bet that most people who have been playing MMORPGs for a while are already tired of the style adopted by WoW, even if they've never played this specific game themselves. Why? Because most MMORPGs are the exact same thing, only with different names. There is barely any innovation in the genre, well, because there is barely any space left for innovation, differently from a single player RPG. The new ideas are always conflictant with the massive aspect of the game.
I can imagine that many roleplayers would be really happy to be able to roleplay with their friends in the game. But what would be the point when you would have to face a bunch of pricks running around naked and screaming things about real life? The truth is that the number of people who roleplay in MMORPGs is close to zero nowadays. You might wonder what do they do in MMORPGs then? It is very simple, actually. They don't care about lore, immersion, or anything of the likes. They just want to prove to the world that they are awesome for spending -insert high amount of time here- in front of the computer to achieve a high level and get ?ber gear. Really, that is what 99% of MMORPGs are about nowadays, large chat rooms in which people race to see who gets to the top level first, nothing else matters for them. The reason for what MMORPGs get addictive to such people is that it becomes an obsession to them, they actually believe that they will be rewarded for their hard work when they reach a high level. And yes, it is not a fun work, it is painful, they don't play for fun, they play to fulfill their obsessions, to achieve goals. I've been to many, many MMORPGs since 2003, and I can say with absolute certainty, that with very few exceptions, all of them were just that.
I wouldn't mind having a multiplayer option to play with a few friends. But a massive game would most likely contradict with TES' essence. I'm hoping that the rumors are false, and that they will stick to what this game truly is about.
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