Content updates are good and all, but an MMORPG's world should never be neglected.

The MMO equivalent of being beaten up by a toddler.

Just a few days ago, my level 51 Ranger got stomped when she tried to solo a level 8 elite. Yet I've noticed a funny thing while writing my Guild Wars 2 review: I'm spending a lot more time in my favorite low-level zones, and the only real reason why I feel any compulsion to leave them is to maintain my pace for the review. You can certainly return to older zones in other MMOs, of course, but all there is to do there is one-hit-kill everything in sight. The way Guild Wars 2 makes lingering in and revisiting early zones actually interesting is that I still find myself challenged when I venture outside the town's walls because of the downscaling system. Just a few days ago, my level 51 Ranger got stomped when she tried to solo a level 8 elite wandering the Wayfarer foothills for a dynamic event. That was a little embarrassing, to say the least, but only because the standard of having low-level zones become complete wastes of time is broken. More MMORPGs should be like this -- I'd be more willing to pay a subscription for such an endlessly challenging and living world instead of content updates that futilely attempt to tack new high-level zones onto the end faster than I can burn through them.



Changing the World One Cataclysm at a Time



Guild Wars 2, of course, doesn't charge a subscription, so it's one step ahead of its competition in this regard. I recently had a chance to chat with Colin Johanson, lead designer of Guild Wars 2, and it sounds like I can look forward to even more of this in the coming months. "Our content system is one that makes adding content to the game really easy to do and really impactful," Johanson said. "We can take existing event chains and add new ways for that event chain to branch off in different directions." That sounds good, and it gets better: "We can sneak events into the world that a player may never discover for months after we put it in, and suddenly they're the first person who found that event. We can take old content and cycle it with new content so events that you're used to start happening a little less often, so this world gets deeper and richer as we go forward. Sometimes we're going to include these in patch notes, and at other times we're going to sneak it in so players discover it." It's such a simple but attractive idea, and Johanson's talk of constantly revitalizing the "old world" seems like a revolutionary philosophy.



Seriously, I want a reason to run through here again when I'm 80.

Insatiable players outran this year's MMORPGs, rushing through the launch content and clamoring for more. Subscription MMORPGs in particular could benefit from this lesson. It's been a rough year for new contenders taking up the now-dated subscription mantle, whether it be the story-heavy Star Wars: The Old Republic, the action-based wonderworld of TERA, or Funcom's ambitious Secret World. All three bolted out of the gate running with bold content update plans, so to speak, but found themselves in trouble once insatiable players outran them, rushing through the launch content and clamoring for more. None of the developers could handle the demands, it seems, despite some valiant efforts. SWTOR buckled toward a free-to-play model with frightening speed (leading to the horrible but apt nickname "TORtanic"), TERA has announced it will shrink to three North American servers this month while its Korean counterpart has converted at least one server to free-to-play, and low subscriber numbers are forcing Funcom to edge off of its planned monthly updates for The Secret World.



One-Trick Ponies with Limited Power



It's not that they necessarily have bad content -- at times, particularly when it comes to leveling, they rose to greatness. I still look back on my Jedi Knight's cinematic-enhanced romance with the plucky Kira Carsen in SWTOR with some fondness, as I do with my battles in TERA's action-packed combat and The Secret World's brainy investigation missions. It's just that all three games fall into that inevitable "theme park" trap of shoving you out of whatever zones you may have loved in the process. That was particularly true of Star Wars: The Old Republic, whose slow decline paradoxically stems from its story-based nature. Those stories compelled us to expect and ask for more from the galaxy around us, but when we inevitably ran out of Jennifer Hale's and Nolan North's voice tracks, it had all the appeal of an old Teddy Ruxpin doll with dead batteries. You could still appreciate it, but there were better toys you could spend your time with.



We never talk anymore, Kira. Just... go fetch me some crystals and leave me be.

BioWare could have implemented useful new hubs or world bosses for high-level players on planets like Tatooine. Perhaps, then, the jaded fans who made their way from Star Wars: Galaxies to Star Wars: The Old Republic had a point. Leveling past a zone is one thing; leveling past a planet is another thing entirely. The greatest loss in the transition from Galaxies to SWTOR was that sense that we were traveling to multiple different planets that we could affect and interact with at any time, and for better reasons than hunting down some datacrons. Asking SWTOR to go towards a sandbox model is a bit much, but even with the current model, BioWare could have implemented useful new hubs or world bosses for high-level players on planets like Tatooine to keep them from becoming the dead wastes they've become. The Rakghoul dailies implemented in version 1.2 were a step in the right direction, but the planet as a whole would benefit from more opportunities for high-level interaction.



An A for Effort



The Secret World also took some steps in the right direction, such as the expansion to the storyline behind the Savage Coast's Overlook Motel that was included in the first major content update, but it was a single event that lost its initial punch of after the first playthrough. TERA, for the most part, never even tried, and many of its early zones are now ghost towns save for a few leveling players.



World of Warcraft, surprisingly, had it right in its early days. It distinguished itself especially with the elemental invasions that popped up in zones that weren't quite at the level cap, not to mention world bosses like Azuregos that gave a welcome reason to visit the beautiful but then-underdeveloped zone of Azshara. I especially enjoyed those months when the four dragons tainted by the Emerald Dream lorded over Azeroth, as they gave me a reason to return to spooky lowbie zones like Duskwood that I otherwise would have never visited again. Now WoW, too, shoves all its new content at the endgame, and most of the zones in the wonderful world Blizzard created have the air of fantasy-themed flyover country. It doesn't help that WoW goes long stretches without any content updates at all -- well over half a year passed between the release of the Dragon Soul update and the recent pre-Pandaria patch -- and I strongly suspect that dearth of content was responsible for much of the recent drop in subscriptions. Rift's titular rifts offer an excellent use of this concept in theory, but because of the differences in level between the players themselves, high-level players closing low-level rifts has always been a thorny issue there.



Hey, it's either the bears or the trout.

Guild Wars 2 understands that desire, and rewards me for it with both decent XP and karma points. But I think that's the big issue here. When I've had a long day and I just want to shoot stuff without commitment, I just want to go to my favorite place and hunt in a favorite zone. It's not always about dungeons and new zones (although that does help). Even now, I return to Northrend's Grizzly Hills in World of Warcraft to do just that. I fly to Amberpine Lodge, proceed to hunt the deer and wolves in the area for skins, and then sell the skins for a decent price on the auction house, all while chatting with friends in guild chat. It's old content now, but I still get plenty of fun out of it. Guild Wars 2 understands that desire, and rewards me for it with both decent XP despite the level difference and karma points, if I complete a dynamic event in the process. There's no worry about lowbies complaining that I'm kill-stealing because I'm only slightly more advantaged than they are, and I still find gameplay resembling that of an actual game despite my huge level difference.



Hindsight is 20-20, but it feels so obvious that MMORPGs should have been doing something like this the whole time instead of chasing after a model that utterly ignores the massive landscapes that make up staggeringly large portions of a traditional MMO's playable landscape in favor of a handful of high-level zones and instances. Many of us play these games to experience a massive, interactive world; if we wanted nothing more than additional maps once we've overplayed the previous ones, we'd content ourselves with arena games instead of MMORPGs. It's a philosophy that mirrors poet TS Eliot's talk about how "the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." While Old Possum certainly wasn't talking about MMORPGs, it's an appropriate thought that future developers would be wise to heed.





Spy Guy says: To an MMO content developer, the horde of hardcore players must look like an incoming swarm of locusts bent on devouring the year's crops. The trick, it seems, is not to grow new crops next door for them to eat when they're done, but regrow the old ones continually. What game does the best job of keeping its old content fresh for you?

We all know the drill. When we level in an MMORPG of the theme-park variety we're supposed to exhaust the quests, chip at a few mineral deposits and pick a few flowers, and then turn our backs on the zone forever as we head to the next zone, where the process repeats itself. Sure, we may fly or ride through them on our way to somewhere else, and a few creative players might come up with, well, unique ways of repurposing them. But in a traditional MMORPG, most zones are meant to be enjoyed in the same way we enjoy the now-endangered print magazine: we exhaust the contents and then cast it aside in the rack in the bathroom for a few bored peeks every now and then.