A better ratio of GMs to players is one of those things that have eluded MMOs. Even in pen and paper land it is not idyllic when you consider the quality of your average GM. Not every GM is a Ed Greenwood. And we see this surface in CoX with the mission architect system. I would wager that system generated missions where better than 90% of the player generated missions. Even with good missions I find myself beta testing them more than actually playing them. Plus, I have seen more than a few players using them to create the ultimate farming mission. *sigh*

Speaking of dialogue, you know what we need, we need bullet time… I mean drama time. So I can freeze action for a moment to exposition. In games right now, when people talk, it’s over the corpse of the other person which isn’t very fun. AoC sort of does this with the fatality moves. While you are locked into this long animation, you are invulnerable.

UO launched with an NPC quest system, but it was badly broken, with NPCs sending you off on missions that were impossible to complete for rewards that they never gave you. If I recall correctly, the automated system was yanked before long, and eventually a more limited “escort” system was implemented.

However, in the meantime, a player volunteer system was put in place. At first, players acted merely as counselors, augmenting the GM staff, but in time some were recruited as storytellers and questmasters. These had access to a limited set of GM tools to spawn monsters and treasures, and take on NPC roles. They scripted adventures, created and placed settings, and became actors in the scenarios.

The result was human-moderated adventures, highly responsive and customizable to the adventure group, each unique and focused much more tightly on telling the story than on providing material advancement.

Two serious issues spelt the death of the system. The first was a lawsuit that claimed the volunteers in MMOs were employees and subject to minimum wage and other labor requirements. The other factor was that the system was very limited. It usually targeted certain high-profile roleplaying communities and venues, and participation depended strongly on hanging out in these locations (or being notified by somebody who did). Inevitably, there was a hue and cry of favoritism against the system, and perhaps it was deserved — while some of us were fortunate enough to have several of these adventures, most players never even had one.

Still, it was to my mind the promise of the sandbox fulfilled — the ability for players to craft a compelling experience for other players, and the capacity to alter it on the fly in response to player actions.

SWG built on the premise, eliminating key issues by making the tools available to all. But since then, right up to the launch of City of Heroes’ Architect expansion, none of the dominant players have picked up the ball. Even COH tools are limited – the mission designer can’t step into the archvillain’s shoes, cackle madly, and make rude comments about hero #3′s elderly widowed aunt (mentioned briefly in his character bio).

And that’s one way in which I hope the evolved elder game, the “Wendy” game if you will, will emulate UO. Building tracks is fun. Madly laying tracks in front of unpredictable players careening wildly across the landscape? Priceless

I think successfully implementing and maintaining the elder game you suggest requires a critical mass of people who are citizens of the world rather than mere players. I think we already have the tools and systems to achieve that. And I suspect that just as WOW assembled many of the best pieces of the theme park style into a polished blockbuster, somebody needs to “borrow” the best parts of social/sandbox worlds and create a monster hit. Then we can reconcile the two.

And I’ll bet the final result looks a lot like a very glossy new UO. With less duct tape.

Why would they leave? They wouldn’t have to engage in this particular elder game – that’s kinda the point! Or are you saying that merely knowing that there was a more freeform style of play available would scare people away, because they’d think it was mandatory?

Richard

They didn’t record it..!

I did notice that one person in the audience was videoing it unofficially, but I don’t know how well it came out or what his plans are for it.

Richard

In the past this was done by allowing unrestricted PvP, although with the larger scale of today’s MMOs it’s now feasible to use other mechanisms (social, economic, even in-world “law”) to accomplish this end in a way that won’t leave players in tears.

Or more to the point, leave devlopers in tears as players depart in droves for more sensible designs. Cry more, dev.

I would like to see a workable design for a player-powered dispute resolution system with more justice and less “might makes right”. Perhaps it is feasible. But is anybody doing it yet?

Yes, they would. In the past this was done by allowing unrestricted PvP, although with the larger scale of today’s MMOs it’s now feasible to use other mechanisms (social, economic, even in-world “law”) to do accomplish this end in a way that won’t leave players in tears.

>If a player makes a contract with another, and one fulfills their end, and then the other backs out at the cost of the first, shouldn’t there be something the first can do about it?

For contracts involving the exchange of goods, this can be hard-wired into the MMO. If I say I’ll pay you 10 gold for 200 ore, then the exchange can be managed automatically and risk-free. There can even be riders, eg. if you don’t deliver me 200 ore within 24 hours then you pay me 20 gold in compensation (20G which would be held in escrow automatically by the physics of the world). I’m not saying it should be done this way – it’s another example of using physics “unrealistically” to hand-hold players – but if you’re OK with that then hey, go for it.

The problems come with services. If I promise to “defend you” or “teach you how to joust”, then there’s know way the game world can know that the task has been accomplished, therefore no way for it to enforce a contract. This is where your point about needing a means to settle differences comes in.

This means of settling differences, of course, be one of the mechanisms by which new, interesting and unpredictable content arises.

Richard

Most of the users who continue to play will be the ones who are happy with things how they have been and will vote for the status quo. Awkward but true.