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Ever

since my friends and I used to create tiny dungeons on

graph paper in order to satisfy our newfound Dungeons & Dragons

obsession

in the early 1980s, I’ve been a dungeon fanatic. What do I

like to do most in

pen and paper role playing games? Explore dungeons. What do I like to

do most

in MMORPGs? Explore dungeons. There is one caveat I have when it comes

to MMO

dungeons though. They need to be non-instanced. I like the thrill of

having to

keep moving forward to avoid getting caught by respawns and saving (or

being

saved by) random players you meet within them too much to be truly

happy in any

instanced dungeon.

I

will admit there are a lot of advantages to instanced

dungeons since they allow developers to create a customized adventure,

complete

with scripted events and more. Even so, a non-instanced dungeon allows

for more

spontaneous reaction and interaction between players, whether good or

bad. No

matter which way a developer chooses to go though, there is a growing

problem

in the industry and I think it’s time we address it.

There

is a distinct lack of intelligent dungeon design in

too many games right now. To be clear, I don’t mean that game

designers aren’t

creating “good” dungeons. In fact, I know more

developers that want to create

very intricate dungeons but due to lessons of the past, have been

unable to do

so. What am I talking about? I’m glad you asked.

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My

favorite dungeon of all time, out of every MMORPG on

the planet, is one in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes called

Trickster’s Haven. On the

surface, it appeared to be just like any other dungeon. There were

pathways, rooms,

and monsters. If players wanted to, there was nothing to stop them from

having

a good old fashioned dungeon crawl and just battle their way through

the

majority of it. For those that took the time to really dig into its

secrets

though, there was an entirely new world waiting to be explored. Or

perhaps I

should say an entirely new dungeon…

Through

a series of ever-increasingly engaging and

complex quests, players would go on a journey to discover the secret of

the

dungeon’s previous occupants. It began with a few simple

“kill x mobs” and

“gather X tokens” quests, though with some

interesting text. From there the

story and dungeon puzzles deepened quickly.

Whether

it was turning in cursed bones to get an

non-cursed bone to summon a specific boss, having to say the word

“dreams” in

three different rooms before the Riddle Master would appear, being cast

out of

the dungeon by the end boss before going back in and finding a way to

finally

slay him… all of these were exceptional concepts in their

own right. Even these

held a secret though. Early in the dungeon, players would have come

across a

room with a painting in it, called the Wall of Denial. Once the final

boss in

this extensive quest line had been beaten, it was then revealed that

the painting

was actually a gateway to an

entirely new

dungeon – an

underground Cyclops palace!

While

I personally think this was all brilliantly

awesome, from a developer perspective it poses a huge issue. Because

the quest

series was so long, so involved, and so intricate, most people had no

idea the

Cyclops palace dungeon even existed. Even at the height of

Vanguard’s

popularity, this second dungeon was rarely occupied due to the length

of time

it took those that didn’t know about it to get flagged. As a

result, those that

knew about it could rarely get a group together and the rest of the

population

was oblivious to its existence. In other words, someone (or a group of

someones) spent a lot of time creating a dungeon, boss encounters, loot

tables,

etc… all for the enjoyment of only a fraction of the

game’s players. No matter

how cool it may have been to create a “secret

dungeon” for players to discover,

in terms of business, it was a waste of resources that could have been

used

elsewhere. Even so, it still remains my favorite dungeon ever so thanks

to

those that made it!

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I

want to see dungeons like Trickster’s Haven make a

return to games. It was exciting, involved, and so exquisitely cool

that I

can’t convey just how much. It’s a case of

“you needed to be there” (or go

there now with a group since the game is free to play) to really

understand. At

the same time though, as gamers, we need to understand that games are

created

by companies to make money. The cooler they can make the experience,

the

better, but there is a limit to how much time can be put into something

that

only a small percentage of the player base are going to see.

Or

is there? The reality is “Of course”, but think

back

to the early days of World of Warcraft raids. There are millions of

players

that never saw even Ragnaros when Molten Core was introduced. Sunwell

saw less

that 2% of the game’s population ever making it to the final

boss. These are

some of the reasons why dungeons are more accessible now than they

originally

were, but I want to believe that some kind of middle ground can be

found

between accessible and exquisitely involved.

When

we’re not acting like hooligans on forums

or in Youtube comments, gamers as a whole are pretty damned smart. We

like

being challenged. We like having to figure things out. We also like the

satisfaction we get from discovering that the dungeon we thought was

pretty

cool turns out to be freakin’ epic! The time has come for

those days to return.

There are games coming down the pipe that are bringing back the idea of

public

dungeons, but I sincerely hope they’re more than just a

collection of random rooms.



