Ownership in MMORPGs

As I think more critically about the differences between the different MMORPGs I have played in the last ten years (DAoC/Lineage II/WoW/Aion) I am struck by one facet that has a strong impact on gameplay: the concept of ownership. This is something that has been unfortunately lacking in WoW, though it abounds in the other titles I have experienced firsthand. I firmly believe that it's an important part of drawing people into a deep involvement and dedication to the game - plus, I really want player housing in Aion :)

DAoC:
Dark Age of Camelot was my first MMORPG, and it will always hold a special elevated place in my heart for this. The art was nothing special - vast expanses of flat green or brown, planar trees, and a complete lack of interractable objects made for a static and uninteresting world. The gameplay was focused heavily on PvP combat - though players could level peacefully in their own lands for the majority of their advancement, "the frontier" was also available. In the frontier of each land you might encounter enemys from the other factions (there were 3 total, a brilliant though simplistic move meant to minimize the effect of population imbalance). There you also had strategic locations to defend - keeps. Each realm had several, perhaps 6 or so. Retaining these was imperative for the defense of the larger and heavily guarded relic keep. If enemy factions breached this keep and conquered your relics, you suffered penalties (and shame). For each relic held beyond one's own relic, there was a bonus granted. The posession of relics was meant to keep the PvP combat alive and flourishing, encouraging people to constantly conquer, defend, and recapture their keeps and those of their enemies.

A feature that Mythic added to the game relatively early on was the ability for a guild to "claim" a keep as their own. Once a guild claimed a keep, they were able to use their talents and resources to upgrade the fortifications, increase the guard patrols, and they also recieved custom messages whenever a patrolling guard was attacked. This ownership placed responsibility on the guild and its members, and also gave them respect if they were able to maintain control of their keep for lengthy periods of time. I still remember the pride I felt when my guild claimed one of the keeps the day this was implemented. It gave us a purpose, and created a hub of guild activity. We'd keep a few people in the area "just in case" as a quick response network, and we'd communicate with the keep owners nearby as a sort of "early warning" system whenever we were attacked. This ownership drew each player into the combat and defense system and allowed us to feel as though we were a part of the story of the world.

The second type of ownership that Mythic added to the game was player housing. To date I don't think I have ever anticipated any addition to an MMO as desperately as I anticpated this particular content patch. A player housing zone was added near each capital city, in which players could purchase a piece of land (10 or so lots per village, with clusters of villages in several zones) and then purchase several tiers of housing. Individual players tended to opt for the cottages (costing 1 platinum) or the house (5 platinum). The third and fourth tiers (villas and mansions) were very expensive (10 and 25 platinum), and generally limited to guilds or other groups of people. Each tier had certain ammenities, allowing for added convenience. You could purchase additional chests to store items in (and easily swap between characters, previously quite the hassle without in game mail), teleport or vendor NPCs, and crafting items such as a forge or a loom, so you could turn your home into a workshop. You were able to customize access to your home, restricting to self only, guild only, friend only, or enabling specific individuals. You could allow your entire guild in your home, but deny permission to use the NPCs, or allow some people to view but not deposit or withdraw from your bank.

I owned a home on each of my servers, and my home quickly became the focal point of my MMO universe. On my Hibernian server we had a strong alliance that held for many years, and the level of friendship between members in different guilds was quite high. Rather than populating villages by guild, we were mixed together a few from each guild in each village - friends and aquaintences alike living as neighbors and mixed guild banners flying side by side. I never particularly enjoyed the architectural style of the cottages, but I did love decorating my home and garden. My home on my Midgard server was another affair entirely - though I'm not much for the rugged viking style either I absolutely adored my large home. It was in the style of a hunting lodge, wooden and spacious inside. I decorated the interior with taxedermied animals I had hunted myself (kinda gross, but the trophy function was also a fun way to document your achievements). The purchase of a porch allowed each player to place an NPC outside the home that could sell crafted or aquired wares (searchable by a community bulletin board, much like the auction house function in WoW). This was a huge advancement from working purely on commission for all crafters. The cost of owning a small home was not prohibitive, and the rent could be paid either in money or in points earned through PvP, so all players had an option to cover their payments.

Lineage II:
Ownership in Lineage II was one of the primary PvP purposes of the game, implemented through castle sieges and battles over clan halls. It was also heavily leveraged in PvE, as all the raid bosses in the game were "world spawn", causing the entire server to fight in order to earn the right to kill and loot it. Not only did clans fight over the limited supply of clan halls (far fewer halls were available than needed to support the server population at the height of the game's popularity), but they fought over a limited number of castles as well. Castle ownership was more than a bragging point and display of power - owning a castle allowed players to control commerce in their region, levy taxes, and control a complicated manor system of harvesting materials that could quickly make the clan wealthy beyond belief. The wealth generated by some castles was indeed so great that the castle owner would buy the allegience of clans to fight in the castle's defense, or to avoid the sieges altogether.

Ownership in Lineage was not the private affair it was in DAoC - the clan halls were shared property as were the castles, and were meant as status symbols. The limited supply generated conflict and kept the politics of each server alive with treachery and backstabbing as each clan fought for a chance at the prize. This was not surprising since Lineage aimed to reward clans, rather than individuals. Until the hero system arrived, the only real means of gaining individual recognition was by becoming a respected crafter, notorious ganker, or the king of a castle (clan leader of the clan conquering a castle).

WoW:
Ownership in WoW does not extend to actual property or strategic points. Wintergrasp, the only PvP location that can be claimed by one faction over another, simply changes hands every few hours on a rotation - each side gets its turn. This makes the wait very short to gain access to the short PvE instance inside the zone, so there is no real incentive to hold onto ownership through zealous defense. Ownership exists also in the form of vanity items such as titles, tabards, and mounts that demonstrate particular achievements and are worn like a badge of pride, but these trinkets are not pieces of the world or tied into the flow of world events, and though some are very rare indeed, they do not have the same effect in my eyes. WoW has its little competitions and rare bonus prizes, but they are not necessary for success in the game. They are just trinkets and novelties - they are enjoyable but serve no real purpose.

I would argue that the implementation of battlegrounds killed what little sense of ownership did exist in WoW. Before BGs there was a good measure of world PvP, which was fun and fit with the world story. After BGs, however, world PvP shrunk to occasional ganking over world resources. People just queue up for BGs when they want to PvP, and world defense became a thing of the distant past. There is no "ownership" of your faction's towns, they just lie desolate and undefended from attack. This is a topic I will touch on extensively later - the way that instanced/rinse and repeat PvP killed WoW as a dynamic game. The world just became a vehicle for the PvE instances, arenas, and PvP battlegrounds. A place to farm and run the same dailies endlessly to make money.

Aion:
For Aion it's too soon to really tell, but it appears they have carried over the idea of castle ownership from Lineage II/DAoC as an incentive to particiate in the structured PvP. Collective ownership by your faction offers definite advantages for PvE content, making additional bosses and dungeons available.

World defense also becomes necessary in order for players to be able to level and farm in peace. Since a number of quests send you to the opposing faction's zones to complete objectives and harvest materials, there is likely to be a constant stream of people invading. This helps keep the game interesting - even while grinding out quests and farming to craft you might run into a few enemies or an entire raid. This forces everyone to pitch in to defend their territory, reinforcing the idea of territory ownership.

As for the rest, well time will tell if we get player housing (which would be awesome, but all the same is probably unlikely) or other things aimed at reinforcing the current game dynamic.

The World vs. The Character: Meta and Micro Story in MMORPGs

One of the fundamental problems with storytelling in an MMORPG is that the game provides two basic types of experience: gaming and social. There needs to be a well defined balance between the game's story (meta) and the character's story (micro), but also some consideration must be given to the player as well, and the fact that their interraction with the world is but one facet of the game.

The World of Warcraft approach to questing and game story has been to focus on the meta story - the world in peril, pushing back the never ending assault of the burning legion on the world of Azeroth. The micro story of each character suffers as a result. Though each character grows in strength and level, there is not much in terms of "character" development. You never "mature" from one class into another, and though you may attain titles and honors, there are no real "ceremonies" or acklowledgement within the game, aside from the odd congratulatory mail from NPCs. In this regard, WoW plays emphasizes the MMO aspect while minimizing the RPG - it sacrifices the small scale narrative and character growth of an RPG for the meta story and social gameplay. The real accomplishments of the game are collective: success in the PvP arena or Battleground system, or success with the 10-20-25-40 player raiding content.

There are small nods to a micro story - opening the dungeon Ahn Quiraj required the completion of a massive quest chain, at the end of which one character on each realm was able to finally break the seal and open the instance. In this instance, individual players were able to impact the world and interract on a "personal" level with the meta story. Other such quests have been since added in small quantity, most notably the zone-wide quest chain in Dragonblight for the Horde (there's some sort of Alliance counterpart, I'm sure) that culminates in the death of an Alliance and Horde Hero, the overthow of Sylvannas Windrunner, and the retaking of the Undercity. Even so, these quests that attempt to draw the player into the meta storyline do little beyond make the player feel like a witness to great events - not a participant. The gameplay video was a nice touch, as with the short one you encounter before Brutallus in the Sunwell. These small moments help to draw the character, and the player, into the world. Ultimately they fall flat due, in my opinion, to their infrequency - they tell little stories but ones that are largely unrelated and don't build on any sort of narrative or momentum.

It's no secret to anyone who has heard me talk at length about my feelings about WoW that I believe Blizzard blew a golden opportunity. Before the release of Burning Crusade, the game did make small efforts to develop characters. They were simplistic, but they did exist: class quests as you leveled, or epic weapon quests for some classes allowed the player to participate in a narrative that was specifically for them. With the release of Wrath of the Lich King, a move was made back in this direction for the Death Knight class. NPCs treat Death Knights with disgust, as does the general population before each individual character is accepted as a member of their faction. In this sense, the DK earns its place as a fighter of the Alliance or Horde. This type of character accomplishment has a strong role playing aspect to it, and manages to draw the character into the story. The starter DK quests are also well designed, taking the character through a number of linked objectives to prove their worth, though they ultimately reject domination by the Lich King and defect to their faction instead.

This type of interraction and questing could have made WoW into a truly phenomenal game. Unfortunately, the choice was made to bog the game down under hundreds and hundreds of quests unrelated to any greater objectives or to develop the feel of the world. "Go fetch" and "go kill" quests are just vehicles for free money and experiencem not storytelling. Players were resigned to grinding out these quests for miscelaneous rewards to gain wealth, rather than move a story point forward. The balance between narrative and practical advancement was lost. WotLK seems to attempt to right this imbalance, but the formula was already set. The excellent quest lines and the ability for quest completion to literally redesign the world (absolutely brilliant) become burried under all the bloated extra quests that simply exist to grant xp and useless items, guide players through each zone from quest hub to quest hub, and occupy player time. Every thing the game does right is countered by something the game does wrong, leaving it at a net standstill.

It's because of this "overburdening" of quests in WoW that I was nervous to hear that NCSoft had implemented a large number of quests in their forthcoming "Aion: The Tower of Eternity" MMORPG. Having experienced NCSoft's idea of quests in Lineage II, I was greatly alarmed. Quests in Lineage II were generally not story telling devices - instead, they were ways to maximize your use of time. Since you were going out to hunt anyway to regain experience you'd lost, or build up some materials and wealth to craft some new gear, you simply accepted a quest that would take you days or weeks to complete that you could inch forward on simultaneously.

There were also "character narrative" quest lines at level 20, 35, 37, and 39 that allowed you to develop your character into a more advanced and specialized class. At level 75 you completed an even more complex and complicated quest line to gain access to a new set of abilities. Beyond that there were additional complex questlines for becoming a noble character, a ranking that came with numerous privledges and special qualities. These types of quests were frustrating but made the player the agent of their character's development. They also punctuated the character's lifespan well, giving the players a feeling that their character was truly advancing periodically. The game did not have many quests, but still managed to draw the player/character into the world by the development of the character through the levels and - most notably - through server reputation. Being a game that focused almost entirely on world pvp and wars between individual players, each person was deeply tied to the other players through social and political actions.


The open pvp system forced players to constantly watch their backs, protect their friends, and build the strength of their clans, alliances, and relationships with other individual players and groups. This social/political structure was incredibly immersive and addictive, drawing players into server drama and making each person an integral part of the server. The "meta story" of Lineage 2 was not a world of NPCs in peril - it was a world entirely populated by players. The void of content actually served to increase the immersive qualities of the game. Player choices - alliances, wars, castle sieges - these drove the story of the world forward and each server was unique and told a different "story". There were servers on which people generally cooperated and worked together, sharing castles and collaborating to defeat the most difficult world spawn raid bosses. Then there were servers like mine (Kain) where massive wars were formed on a server-wide scale with kill zones, territorial lockdowns, and constant raids of the "enemy" territory. As a casual virtual social anthropologist it was an incredibly fascinating experiment in human nature. Given a blank slate, people responded with a terrific breadth of actions, from incredibly collaborative and supportive to aggressive, violent, or manipulative.