The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games - Michael J. Tresca [116]
Status
Unlike other MMORPGs, Dungeons & Dragons Online has fewer levels, with four steps between actual levels. This spreads out the bonuses received in comparison to the tabletop game. It seems to be more of a compromise to keep the two in sync. Since fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons goes no higher than thirtieth level and most MMORPGs range up to 100, the modifier of four roughly equates the level systems.
MMORPGs reinforce the Sisyphean level-grind. The character increases in a perpetual growth arc. This is also of true in Dungeons & Dragons, which discourages death as detrimental to a long-term campaign, and it’s true in massive multiplayer games, in which death is a mere inconvenience. It is a world of limitless growth, of clearly designated rewards, of an ascension punctuated by an increase in power and opportunity. It is, in essence, the remedy to what real life so often promises but fails to provide to the middle and lower class ... a clear path of upward mobility (Castronova 2005:274).
In EverQuest, the maximum levels have gradually been increased, from 50 up through 70 (Taylor 2006: 28). In World of Warcraft, leveling is automatic. Cash buys access to training in new skills and characters gain a point in their skill tree.
In WoW, once you’ve leveled you cannot lose that level, which is a nice perk. However, new skills or spells feels somewhat rare after new levels, and while certain levels have a big skill or ability or item you can get, many levels feel like they are stepping stones for the more important levels [Simes 2010].
Conclusion
MMORPGs benefitted greatly from CRPGs and their online hybrids like Diablo. Advancing in fits and starts, MMORPGs were initially defined by processing power and network speed. With broadband access and more powerful processors, those two factors became less important in determining the breadth of a MMORPG.
Development of fantasy games seems to have largely shifted away from CRPGs to MMORPGs, if only because MMORPGs are based on a subscription model that keeps making money for the game company. As Castronova explained, game companies have little incentive to promote immersion in a role—they are primarily concerned with making back their investment by having players return again and again. So long as that happens, MMORPGs are a very appealing model for success.
On the other hand, the MMORPG has largely taken the tabletop paradigm and simply expanded it to thousands of players, which results in some odd aberrations. In Dungeons & Dragons, the players are heroes and central to the plot. In MMORPGs, the world is populated by heroes. Nowhere was this more evident than Ultima’s failure to create a fully functioning ecology. MMORPGs do not mimic normal ecologies, but rather are filled with roving bands of superpredators—the adventurers. Recent MMORPGs haven’t really evolved beyond World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft did everything EverQuest did, but better—better graphics, fewer bugs, and a more defined world.
Where do MMORPGs go from here? In large part, MMORPGs still struggle with how to handle their massive player bases. Taylor theorizes that there might be advantages to a smaller game world in unforeseen structural, economic or organizational ways (2006:160). In this regard they can learn from MUDs, which have a much more personalized focus on their players, and PBBGs, which harness the power of large groups without requiring them all to be logged in simultaneously. Guilds and clans will continue to become a formal part of the game experience rather than a meta-game artifice created by players.
Sliding the media richness scale from MUDs, which provide only text to describe a world, to MMORPGs, which provide graphics and sound, Castronova