Brad stole the whole design (document) for Everquest from a DIKU mud (Sojourn).

i) the classes;
ii) the spells and skills;
iii) the inter class dependancy;
iv) the cities and zones;
v) the loot;
vi) the multiple group raid system with encounters that could take hours
vii) harsh penalties for failure

EQ1 was and is Sojourn with 3D graphics.

Sojourn was very different to the other DIKU muds. It was harsh and unforgiving. It had little solo play.

Blizzard went back to the genres roots and identified elements of DIKU mud play in MUDs other than Sojourn that were fun and used them as the foundation for WoW.

The good news is Blizzard didn’t exhaust the ideas those games have to offer; many of them are still untapped. There’s gold in them thar hills ……

Yes, that would be that pesky “business” thing you referred to. Eventually the money dries out and you have to ship something. A few companies are lucky enough to be able to go back and revise things until they work, but most companies cannot. Often if a design does not live up to its expectations, it’s canceled instead of reworked. In the face of that choice, some devs prefer to go on with a flawed implementation and a game rather than insisting on doing it right and not having a job. According to some interviews Bill Roper did about Hellgate: London, this is what happened to that game: he was used to Blizzard’s “when its done” mentality and the publisher laughed when he said he needed more money to finish the project. So, he launched the game and the rest is history, even the game unfortunately.

And that’s the issue in a nutshell, though. It’s all well and good to say, “I want to build a game that doesn’t penalize socializers!” but when the person signing the checks points at WoW and says, “I want one of those!” then your razor is going to be discarded in short order if you want to make your mortgage payment. Given that I’m not in that position (for better or for worse), I feel freer to start questioning the base assumptions many developers make about MMOs.

Nobody is saying let’s get rid of Diku MUD underpinnings completely. All we are saying is that we’d like to see some alternatives offered that provide more thoughtful means of self-actualization for socializers and explorers which you acknowledged quite nicely. If you’ve read those blogs surely you see lots of solutions being presented.

I would wager that part of the reason you are somewhat defensive of the Diku MUD system is that Copernicus will be based on it. Fair enough. Therefore your challenge will be to reinvigorate that system and make it brand new again — which is exactly what Blizzard did by taking EQ and making it into WoW.

It’s almost as if you have crafted a clever excuse not to seriously listen to the MMO veterans out there — not the self-important misanthropes and malcontents at FoH — but the real ones that actually give a damn about this genre. If we didn’t care, we wouldn’t be having this discussion right now. You should be grateful that this genre has the kind of passionate people that live, breathe, eat and sleep MMOs. As I recall, you yourself were one of the pioneers of inspired MMO commentary yourself.

To play the devil’s advocate, sure there will be millions of new gamers in the future but that’s hardly an excuse not to innovate and push the genre forward. In a few years when your MMO comes out people will (hopefully) be pretty sick and tired of WoW. They’re going to want something to fill the void. With luck, your product will be there to give them what they need. Sounds like you have a good handle on providing just enough innovation to counteract the familiarity.

I’m certain it doesn’t come down to business in the eyes of developers. I’d be curious about the pressure from management though. How much do they say “lets do something else” and how much do they crunch numbers and ask, “Steve, is this really worth the risk?” Obviously 38 is a special breed but I’m talking about the EAs and such. Just a curiosity really. I happen to like Diku MMOs too! I’m just a little tired of the exact same thing lately.

That leads to a question/hypothesis*: How many Diku’s will the “core audience” play in a lifetime? Is it feasible to expect to pick up a large portion of WoW’s audience with the next great Diku? Or does the next great Diku need to rely more on picking up the current crop of 14-18 year olds who haven’t played WoW because its been out “forever” and is an “old” game?

I think its entirely possible for another game to come along and do as well as WoW, but I’m guessing it will be as much about market timing as anything else, catching a fresh wave of new players that aren’t jaded against the model.

*Questions/hypothesis assume the real answer will be somewhere between the extremes.

@reatukrentor: “I’m curious, what’s your opinion about Eve:Online then? A niche PVP game that has been around for many many many months and no indication it’s gonna die.”

I’m of the opinion that EVE has compelling socio-economic aspects that make it much more than just a standard PvP game. The ganking that happens has a much deeper context than most fantasy-based PvP focused games that have been released.

@Ferrel: “It is unlikely for the industry to just dump everything that they’ve done and start from scratch. Business wise it is risky and this is a risk adverse market.”

I get what you’re saying, but I’d also like to take this opportunity to say on the record that it doesn’t all come down to business. Some of us actually love Diku MMOs and want to make cooler/better ones. Honest. I’d love to get rich doing it, but I don’t expect to. This is just a style of game I personally believe in, and a lot of people feel the same way.

@Brian Green: “So, how do we break out of these patterns?”

I can’t know for sure whether other developers have tried and failed to do this, but I can tell you how I would approach it at a basic level.

First, state clear goals which will become your decision razors. For example: “We will make an accessible world-class MMO filled with compelling achievements, encouraging exploration and discovery, with diverse tools for socialization which foster community building.”

Second, examine every feature and implementation using these razors. Under this mandate, if a feature doesn’t fulfill all these criteria–no matter how cool that feature seems–it must be revised or cut. If the concept of the feature works but the implementation does not, change your implementation. If you refuse to do that, you must reexamine your core values and be honest with yourself about the kind of game you’re making.

So if your quest system seems nice and accessible but actively discourages socialization in its implementation, it should fail your test and you should revise it (or your product goals). It doesn’t all come out perfectly, and some systems will push the boundaries of what passes the razors, but there needs to be a clear reason for such compromises.

What I’ve seen happen before is that compromises are made for the sake of meeting a deadline or hitting some quantity of content or features; this is where things fall apart. It makes your stated goals meaningless and does away with the checks and balances created to keep the project honest and on track.

As with the business model variety (I will never get good value out of subscriptions, for example, but know that others do), I’m not calling for the immediate execution and/or exile of “me, too” design. I’m calling for devs to understand that the industry is in a rut, and that perpetually poaching from the same player pool, whether in design or in business model, makes for a stagnant genre.

As Brian notes, there are patterns the genre is stuck in, and that has a way of accelerating diminishing returns.

That is exacly what I have been saying for years. Themepark achievements are fine but exploring and socializing is being penalized for no good reason.

The explorer problem is easy. Give a player credit for any quests they make progress on rather than only the ones in their log book. That way, if a player is out exploring and completes objectives for a quest they don’t have to come back and repeat it just because they found another quest that takes them there. I can’t tell you how many times I avoided cool looking places just because I knew I would get a quest for it later. That is not fun for explorers.

Socializers have a whole host of problems. Too many games are being released with no social hubs. In fact, it seems like the games that have social hubs have them by accident more than anything else. Social hubs need to be a core part of the world design as do some non-combat activities that encourage socializing. Even something as simple as a chessboard in a tavern would help, but it seems like these are the first features to be cut in modern MMOG’s.