The dynamic in MMOs is interesting though, there’s certainly more pressure to conform. And like you say, in an achiever-oriented game that means pressure to minmax a bit, even if you aren’t an achiever yourself but may want to play with people who are.

The “correct” answer is to sit back and have fun with the choices. The problem is that it’s easier for me to say that than for people to actually do it. Especially with achiever-focused gameplay, people want to squeeze every possible advantage out of the system. If people find out they could have gotten +1 more from choice A instead of choice B way back when, they’ll be unhappy. Without any consequences, there really aren’t any meaningful choices, however.

I suspect that people who can’t just let go and have fun will fall into two main categories. The first will just look up the FAQ, as you hint at. The second will emotionally detach themselves from the character to find out optimal choices; this option will severely work against any “immersive” stories the game might try to provide.

My thoughts.

I think you’re bang on the money here. Part of the learning experience is coming up against a sense of frustration (in my experience, at least). Overcoming that is a different and more engaging sense of achievement than a lot of short term ‘fun’. I also think that in my experience, when a player leaves, it probably isn’t down to one single issue but a raft of other things that add up to ‘getting bored’ or ‘this game no longer fits my play style’ or ‘don’t have time for this any more’ or ‘emotionally traumatised by guild drama, I want some time out’.

So a good game can’t be fun all the time, and I’m feeling now as though I’m using the word ‘fun’ in a very undisciplined way

But I do think some permanent choices are more fun than others. Picking a class is fun because not only does it affect your whole game but it’s a choice that gets reinforced a lot later. Maybe there are class specific quests, class specific gear, class specific lore. There’s a whole identity you tap into when you pick a class, for example.

Also, never take how engaging your MMO is for granted. Players can and will leave you if the bad outweighs the good, even short term, if they feel shortchanged. Even people who stay won’t like you that much.

I find that people who talk about MMOs end up reaching conclusions that near what we try to express on TATI. I wanted a place to discuss what to do next in MMOs instead of focusing on what is happening now (aside from how the current can inform us towards the future).

I don’t think that virtual worlds and games need to be separate. The goals of the game can tie together the people in the virtual world better than just a desire to chat. The game, if designed well, motivates players to meet and talk with people who they otherwise might ignore or miss completely. I find games are a great way to bring people together, and a good virtual world keeps people together.

This compounds with a hero driven storyline, because heroes exist because everything is gone to hell. So in order to continue a permanent storyline in a meaningful way for heroes, things have to keep getting worse, or the heroes become obsolete.

But if you change your goal from being fun to being engaging, you begin to have options. The point then isn’t to shelter the player from all the bad things, but rather to balance the good and bad. It also requires a certain amount of… sagely patience, I guess you could say, on the part of developers. You have to be able to ignore sudden dips in player numbers, because for a certain number of people the automatic answer to any problem is to run away. That sounds bad, but if you really have balanced it, chances are, they’ll be back later because they’ll be after the good times they once had.

I think I’m still feeling a bit torn because I can see that it makes sense to let games be games and virtual worlds be virtual worlds, but I do love virtual worlds and wouldn’t really be happy with an ultra-instanced set of minigames pretending to be a world.

I laid the groundwork for how to do this in a post on That’s a Terrible Idea: http://thatsaterribleidea.blogspot.com/2009/07/mmorpg-revolution-10-points.html

It seems like your post is a direct riff on a lot of stuff we discuss and analyze at TATI.

I still think we need a radical re-invention of the MMO genre. Something that takes a week, a month or even a sabbatical full of beer, friends and fishing. OK, I do not like fishing, but you get the idea.

Maybe some people then get some enlightened ideas. But they won’t have the money to realize them.

Sorry, this is so sad… I am such a pessimist and dreamer at the same time… sigh!