Virtually Virtual Worlds

I've recently been playing a couple of games which aren't quite MMOs, but nearly are. First, the wonderfully silly Kingdom Of Loathing. Initially just the perfect tonic after a hard day's bearded discussion of brain-farts, it creates an impressive sense of community despite lacking a multiplayer core game. A multiplayer core game is one thing that Guild Wars does have and it will be interesting to see whether its reliance on instancing will cause it to suffer in the long term as Richard Predicts. Despite my reservations about instancing, I soon relapsed in to my old monster bashing Diablo addiction. I'm sure it will be a success and it's possible that Guild Weed will act as a gateway drug, bringing more people to MMOs and working well as an alternative on NCSoft's channel. I just hope that it is an alternative, rather than the path that all future MMOs will take. Having come this far it would be a shame to just return to Diablo.

Comments

[Edward Castronova]

1.

not sure how i am going to avoid getting addicted to kingdom of loathing. great find!

[ren]

2.

Darn Penguins!

[Spirestar]

3.

Yeah Guild Wars is a "chat n' slash." It should not even be classified near or discussed in the any posts relying on the words "virtual world" as it's topic. But keeping with the 'Terra Nova stroke ourselves routine" I'd say go ahead and run thirty comparitives until your mother gets old, and you finally decide to go and see her.

[Cory Ondrejka]

4.

Yes, I have too many friends who have been sucked in so I'm staying far away from KoL!

[Bart Pursel]

5.

I don't know anything about KoL, but Guild Wars is by far the best MMO (if you want to call it that) I have played in a while. I've read an interview where they are actually calling it a CORPG (competitive online role playing game). They do rely heavily on instancing...sometimes to the detriment of the game, other times to my delight.

I would call it a MMO in that you can talk to and interact with several hundred people at a time in each town instance. And it is very easy (approximately 4-5 seconds) to transport from one town instance to the next, making it possible to find and interact with thousands of people very quickly (they supposedly had 40,000 people download and play the game during their world preview event).

I really like the business model and most design decisions they have made with Guild wars. Then again, I'm somewhat competitive person and gamer, so I thoroughly enjoy all the emphasis put into PvP, but also enjoy the ability to PvE with friends whenever I'd like.

[Jim Purbrick]

6.

I have too many friends who have been sucked in so I'm staying far away from KoL!

We're in good company, KoL has 150,000 active players. Maybe we should add it to the 100K group...

[Andrew Burton]

7.

If I may ask, can you expound on this a little:

...it creates an impressive sense of community despite lacking a multiplayer core game.

I think I understand what you mean, but undertainty makes me ask for clarification.

[Jim Purbrick]

8.

It creates an impressive sense of community despite lacking a multiplayer core game

What I mean is that in most MMOs you get together in a group and travel round the world co-operating to fight monsters and complete quests.

In KoL there is no spatial aspect to the communication, you're never with anyone spatially and yet I've formed a clan with my friends and we co-operate to help each other through the game.

As a pastamancer I add noodles to hell broth and bat wing stir fries for my friends. They create asbestos staffs for me and our sauceror buffs us up with jalapeno sauceospheres. It's remarkable how much of the camaraderie of other group based MMOs exists without any of us actually being together facing challenges as a group.

[Mike Darga]

9.

Kingdom of Loathing

I just finished playing KoL (as in gave away my stuff and moved on) a couple of days ago. It's a cool game, but in my opinion if you're not playing it for the comedy there's not much other reason to. There is some aspect of socialization through clans, but I think if i hadn't been playing with people in my office I really would have quit sooner for the lack of contact with other players. Since it's just a webpage linked to a database, the entire world is basically instanced. You always play solo, but can send items and messages to other players at any time.

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The game forces you to play only a certain amount each day. You get 40 adventures per day at first, with one adventure basically equate to one fight or task or movement. If it was a tile based game, each traveling to a new tile, receiving anything that's there to find, and fighting an enemy there would all be encompassed into one adventure, if that makes sense. More adventures are doled out every night at midnight, and there are certain items that can be worn and food/drink that can be eaten to get more adventures as you progress. So the game starts out only taking half an hour a day or so (which is often doubled or tripled by waiting for pages to load) and ends up taking much longer by the end of pve content, as you might buy a store to manage etc.

I made my account October first and played until a couple days ago, for a total of less than 100 hours I'd say. So It's fairly safe to get addicted to from that standpoint. The endgame is meant to be pvp, but I found it to be broken for reasons I'll mention in a moment.

Being told by the game how much you can play per day is nice at first because it always keeps you wanting more. Eventually it got frustrating for me, because there were certain things that you have to take care of every day and it can start to feel like work.

The game plays very much like an adventure game with leveling and spells. There are lots of very strange ways and funny ways to combine objects and reagents, and if you can resist looking up the "answers" online, it could be a great game for explorers.

I think this might be something specific to the class I played (pastamancer), but there was only about a 4 day window for me between getting access to spells and having my melee attack become much more powerful than any of them. That contributed to the feeling of boredom, because without using spells the game is basically just hammering the "adventure again" button over and over.

The reason I left rather than play pvp is because it's broken to my mind. The game allows you to attack anyone of the same level as you, but it's possible for players to purposefully raise all their stats except for the stat that would cause them to level. Also, the game gives those that donate $10 a special item that raises all stats significantly without bumping the character a level. Many characters have the maximum of three of these. So basically it's impossible to kill anyone, or was for me at least.

Robin Hunicke has some screenshots that give an idea of the game's interface and humor on her blog (follow the link on the uppermost right).