MMOs and "wilderness"

This is something that occurred to me while I was trying and failing to go to sleep last night, and I figured it was a good litmus test to see if we can still function as a community on matters independent of NCsoft or Guild Wars 2. So let me make this into a simple question, but please do read the rest of the post for the context behind it:

Do you thin an MMO can ever have true "wilderness" in it?

You may be thinking "Duh! Every MMO has forests!" and you're right... But are those wilderness? Deus, an old survival simulation game not to be confused with Deus Ex, has a pretty good example, but to me, true wilderness is defined by being in a place that has not been developed by civilisation, and where you have no access to facilities of any kind at all. In such a wilderness scenario, you have access to only yourself, the resources you brought with you and the resources you can find locally. Why I find THIS to be "true" wilderness specifically is for a couple of reasons: seclusion and solitude. Look through your library of games, and you may notice that relatively few have either quality, and almost none have both. Some do, of course, but not very many.

But can this work in an MMO? I don't think so, and the reason for this is simply - MMOs tie you down to facility providers and push you into social hub areas as a means to get you to socialise. Consider what you do in nearly any MMO. You go out question, fill up with gear and then you have to find a vendor to sell it to, so you can get money with which to buy more gear from another level. You level up, so you have to find a skill trainer to actually capitalise on your new level. You find crafting items and know a recipe, so now you have to find a crafting table to craft at. That sort of thing. MMOs are purpose-designed to always funnel you through towns for the sake of convenience. That's where all the shopkeepers are, that's where all the facilities are... And really, would you rather have to search for and track down a merchant every time you needed to sell?

Of course not! What kind of annoying busywork would that be? But that's part of the problem. By grounding you into a vast support network of NPCs, MMOs ground you into a framework of civilisation, meaning that you're never truly out in the wild. Sure, you go into a forest, but you're never too far from a town. At worst, it might be a long trek or an expensive town portal spell to the nearest town. And it doesn't always have to be a time. Sometimes it's a camp, sometimes it's an outpost, sometimes it's just some guy in the woods, but no matter what you do, you're dependent on a support infrastructure that you depend on. And if that infrastructure went down, say by going to a new continent with no friendly NPCs on it with no way back... What would you do? You'd get salvage and levels and gear, but the most you could do with those would be store them away for when you got back to town.

Consider where "forests" exist in most MMOs - in-between towns, or at most in-between towns and the zone border. But what about the forest beyond the cave that's beyond the forest that's beyond the desert? Doesn't exist, because there will have been "towns" along the way, else it would be too much of a trek, wouldn't it? And I'm not saying "let's go back to EQ and make everything inconvenient!" I just mean... Consider an MMO with a completely independent character, say like you would be in MineCraft. If you need to craft, you can craft by yourself. You don't need no stinkin' NPC to craft at and you don't need a static point on the map to craft at. You want to craft by that bush near the cave? You can. You want to train yourself up? You can. You want to sell items? Well, you can break them for parts to make other items yourself. Why I say this character is self-sufficient is because the character can perform the "professions" in an MMO without needing help from the world - without needing towns.

The other big thing about wilderness is solitude. That doesn't mean you're by yourself - you can very much have solitude with a group of people. But you can't have solitude when plugged into a social network. Part of being in the wilderness is being displaced from society and how we behave when larger social norms no longer apply. Not only is this not possible to do in an MMO with disembodied chat, it's actually not a good idea to do that in a game which relies on social interaction for its player retention. You WANT to jam people together into large social hubs, you WANT to keep crossing their paths, you want to give them as many opportunities as you can to interact. Sending a player out into the woods and cutting his chat is basically business suicide because that's no longer an MMO.

So can this work in an MMO? No, I don't think it can, but bizarrely enough, the closest I've felt to it was in this very game. The Shadow Shard is the game's perfect "wilderness" zone, because it matches my conditions as much as it can be expected. The Shard - specifically the Chantry and the Storm Palace - are physically very remote, or at least were at one point. Back in the day before the cop-out teleportes, actually getting to the Storm Palace was a major trek, going through quite a few fights and seeing quite a few sights. Even with the Mole Points, you could only go as far as the Cascades, and even then only to the beginning part of them. But go into the Chantry and all of a sudden you're "far" from the city. You can't go back to sell, you can't go back to train, at least not if you want to get to where you are easily. And because the Shard has always been unpopular, you never met another soul in there. In my whole time in the Shard over the last eight years, I ran into one person once, and that was at the Horta Vine, which works as a choke point.

There were limitations, of course. City of Heroes still ties you down to stores to sell your enhancements and buy new ones, to trainers to train up at, to crafting tables to make stuff at, plus there's always global chat, and I was always bantering with someone while I did this. But the place still had atmosphere. It still felt remote, cut off and lonely, at least as much as an MMO can. But, of course, the teleporters were added and rapid transit was added and things were made more convenient, at the sake of atmosphere. Because people just don't seem to play MMOs for the atmosphere. Gawking at a pretty picture gives no experience, after all, especially when it takes a long time to get to from where you were, which was usually Talos Island for the transit hub that it was.

But that's just me. Do you think true wilderness can exist in an MMO?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I think you're either expressing your idea in a weird way or coming at it from a weird angle; most of what you've said makes me agree that MMO characters tend to be bad at "surviving" in the wilderness for very long, but not that wilderness doesn't exist.

I have, on occasion, gotten that feeling of "I'm alone and way far away from everyone and everything" while playing MMOs. It doesn't happen often, since if nothing else you tend to run across other players pretty regularly, and I find that it mostly happens when I'm doing things outside the normal structure of gameplay, like exploring just for its own sake. Occasionally, in another game, a friend and I would choose a remote and rarely-frequented location and go there just for the hell of it; by nature these tended to be places that there was no real reason to visit, so we didn't get much out of it mechanically, but those trips are some of my favorite memories from that game.

An MMO where characters are more self-reliant would be very different from most MMOs I've played; some kind of post-apocalyptic setting would be well-suited to it, I think. I don't think it would be impossible, but it would have to be structured very differently. Maybe focused more on "quests" in the original sense of the word as long and difficult tasks, rather than the usual MMO sense of quick disposable objectives, so that you wouldn't be "checking in" so very often. I'm not sure if that really would lend itself well to an MMO, though.

The Shadow Shard was and still is pretty much a wilderness area. Though not to the same extent it once was.

Kora Fruit missions were sometimes your only source of inspirations once you got deep in the zone.

Remember traveling without fly and no jet pack vendor available, you had to use geysers and hortha vines and unlock the secret way points to get around.

New players have no idea what a hortha vine even is.

Star Wars Galaxies had hideously large planets, and since it had player-built structures, you could really be hell and gone from anyone else.

The closest I've come to this is probably Final Fantasy XI, for all it's flaws. Sure, there's still towns, but it is possible to travel to some very isolated places that few other players really bothered with, a bit like the Shadow Shard. When I used to EXP off Bombs on my Summoner, I usually went out of the way to find places where I wouldn't be disturbed by passing players, and I wasn't disrupting any nearby EXP groups. The only people I'd usually see were other summoners. The closest city to Uleguerand Range is (or was, before the introduction of Abyssea made more fast travel options available) four zones away.

Since there was no requirement to be near some sort of crafting table, it was possible to field craft supplies. I was no cook, but I often took out ingredients for Silent Oils and Prism Potions, in case I needed stealth buffs in magic-aggro areas.

More recent changes to the level cap have meant that most of the non-Abyssea zones are a little less...well, scary, for lack of a better word. When the level cap was 75, areas designed for level 75 characters still had a lot of stuff around that could be considered challenging, the areas themselves felt hostile. With the cap now at 99, these areas are a little more trivial, although I've noticed the devs have thrown a few curveballs by adding some really high level mobs to old areas in far off corners.

Wildernesses have no boundaries, or at least have boundaries that are very, very large. There are millions of people living in the Amazon, yet they can still get lost because it's such a large area.

MMO zones always have boundaries, and cannot be large enough to remain unexplored.

This is a technical issue. Someday in the future we will have MMOs capable of simulating entire Earth-sized planets; those worlds will have wildernesses in them.

My favorite MOG next to CoH is Minecraft for much this reason.

The main problem is that you *do* need a way to quickly join another group of players in order to have a good travel-adventure within the constraints of an MOG, and thus the taxibots are born.

Nowadays, with all the available travel powers, teleport powers, etc. to which we have access, no, I do not think there is wilderness in this game. I don't honestly know if there ever was.

However...

I distinctly remember my first days in the Hollows, before I had figured out the chat interface, and before I had any travel powers, and before the Hollows revamp. I was sent on a mission in the southeastern corner of that zone, hoofing it with Sprint the whole way (since I also did not know to pick up Fitness at that point). That was really the one moment in this game where I felt truly isolated.

If you aren't concerned about trading things an constantly earning Influence, CoH does have a few wilderness-like zones. But as Remus says, you soon run up against the issue of the game's technical limitations.

The problem for most MMOs is that they only simulate some very basic things, and do those pretty badly. I personally hate "item degradation" because stuff in real life is actually far more durable than the crap in most MMOs. (You could barely go on a single mission in DDO without having to get your knife sharpened after. DCUO is worse: why is my Bat-o-phone in need of repair again?) But in a real wilderness you have to make sure you stay within a certain temperature range, you need copious amounts of water and a decent way to find food, either through foraging or hunting, you need to rest. No games can really emulate the extreme camping or long-distance trekking of real life and still remain fun.

Still, it would be cool to go somewhere in a game where there aren't signs of civilization. Millennium-old ruins, maybe, but not lit torches. No one to trade with or talk to, just pure finding a new place others haven't been before.

There's more then you think.

- EVE has most of it's server given over to "wilderness" and null sec space systems are known as some of the roughest and most dangerous PvP areas in gaming history. They also introduced wormhole space which was a lawless area that you conquered, built in and exploited for commercial gain.

- STO has unexplored sectors in space with various random worlds and missions and no map to tell you where they are. Nowhere near as dangerous or lengthly as EVE though!

- The biggie, Minecraft! The entire game is based around dumping you in the middle of a wilderness and telling you to get on with it. Visit a PC server with a mapping mod attached and you will see just how huge Minecraft worlds are!

- Terraria does the same as Minecraft but 2D and a lot smaller.

Vanguard has a HUGE wilderness.

As someone who has both soloed and teamed, I can say that you don't always have to force people team up. I have found times where I am soloing and thinking to myself "this is boring, I think I will go and find people to interact with" and proceed to find a team. Teaming is not just about helping each other with a goal; it is also about the socializing and talking. Think about it: doing a boring, menial job tends to be more fun and goes quicker if you have someone to talk to while you are doing it.
In the end, MMO developers need to learn that forcing people to team will get them nowhere. If people want to team, they will. If the don't, they won't.

I mentioned all that because, if done right I feel that it could be doable. The only thing that seems to be taken from D&D is that fighting creatures=rewards. What always seems to be missed is that it is not the only way to get XP. I honestly feel that if they give substantial rewards for exploration, people will go out and explore more. Not everyone will do it of course, especially if it is made a challenge.
The idea is having a vast area not unlike the Shadow Shard where you follow clues out. Where the wilderness idea comes into play is there is no other NPC for miles, you have to completly survive on your own traveling from clue to clue (it could be randomized so that not everyone follows the same path) until you find what you are looking for. Granted, this doesn't have to be done alone if you don't want to of course, but so long as the option is there, I would be happy.
The big take away is; while a game based around survival and being alone probably would not work, I feel that it can be accomadated for in future MMOs so if people want to go off by themselves and never have to interact with anyone, they can.
Good idea or ramblings of a crazy man hopped up on caffine? You decide!

Not sure about graphical games. But for some text games, yes.

For example, the game Dragonrealms is absolutely enormous. Some areas are highly populated. But there are areas that are both extremely remote and difficult to access (they may require skill checks to even get to). It's possible to disappear there for a large span of time if you don't want to be found. The game is semi-realistic in that that can be dangerous, and you wouldn't want to live out there forever (you'd need to return to semi-civilization to regain favor from the gods if you happened to die out there a lot). It might also be helpful to know a person or two out there, because there are risks. But persons dedicated to role playing that style can (and have) pulled it off.

There are also a couple of wilderness areas you wouldn't want to stay in. I recall an extremely dangerous area that forced players to crawl on their knees, (a combat penalty among some other things), that is crawling with wolves, and that delivers nerve damage over time. Also some generally just really scary areas. Traversing them is a mark of pride among players dedicated to exploring.


PS it may be helpful to add why someone might not want to be found. The game has consent-based PVP. What this means is that there are no actual mechanics that prevent players from attacking each other. Players can technically attack each other at any time. However, the game's policy states that you cannot just run around killing people. The other player has to implicitly consent to the attack. For example, pickpocketing another player is considered to grant consent. So is being a Necromancer and being "outted" in town. If either of these things happen, you may need to take off running in case the person decides to try to kill you. That's when you hope your knowledge of the landscape and ability to climb and swim is better than theirs.

Not only it can, but it does exist. There is (or was) a Roman-themed MMO out there where everything is player constructed. You started in the wilderness with nothing but a few tools. You could only talk to people at close range, and with the size of the game and the small playerbase I actually never saw any other living soul in the 3 days or so I played it.