You know, I never thought to write this up when it happened at the time but, the more I think about it, days later, the more it niggles at the part of my brain which is reserved for conversations that aren’t allowed to run their full course and leave me with more questions than answers. You know the kind… you start thinking about them just before you have to go to sleep and the like.

So what’s behind this rather angsty introduction? Well, you see, in a recent thread on the BioWare forums, I pointed to an earlier – and extremely popular if the amount of Diggs was any indication – MMOCrunch editorial I’d written which ran, in part:

MMORPGS have been dumbed down to the max and someone, somewhere, needs to show that this need not be the case for people who want something more from their gaming than being pushed from quest to quest, zone to zone, doing EXACTLY the same thing everyone else is doing, ad infinitum.

Next thing, BioWare employee James Henley (who has identified himself in other posts he has made on the forum as “World Designer, Unnamed MMORPG, BioWare, Austin Studio”) shot back a pithy one-liner at me, just 18 minutes after my post:

I’m almost positive that, one day, people will learn to tell the difference between a fact and their opinion.

To me, that came across as a rather snappy – and kind of unnecessary – comment in general, but also suggested that he disagreed with what I’d said. I mean, people only tend to take what I like to call “the snappy route” on a forum when they disagree with you. Does that seem like a fair assessment to you, dear readers?

I replied, asking for more of his thoughts because I was genuinely intrigued why he would make this comeback. In asking, I pointed out that today’s MMORPGs are a conveyer belt of quests; have levels that are, seemingly, an arbitrary number, rather than meaning something; that people are sick of “the quest grind” in MMORPGs, especially when the quests are variations of “Kill 10 monsters” and “Deliver this letter” and there has been a real void in the market for an intelligent MMORPG, post Ultima Online and the original SWG.

Do they seem like valid complaints from the MMORPG community at large? I thought so. So I naturally wanted James’ thoughts.

No response.

Later, the thread was closed altogether because there is currently a catch-all thread that BioWare uses for its MMORPG discussions (whether they relate to its MMORPG project, or not), so the chance for James to reply directly to the thread disappeared entirely.

Now, why does the exchange still bother me? Primarily because I was talking about a games developer needing to go out there into the marketplace and take a stand by creating a sandbox MMORPG to counteract the plague of MMORPGs that are currently out there, all offering exactly the same thing and all of them, you will note, boring the pants off users, faster and faster with each new release.

(Heck, it’s no lie to say that people were sick of Age of Conan’s end-game within weeks of launch. That’s patently ridiculous, and definitely not what you get when a game has sandbox options…)

Yet here was James, sprinting off the line, with his slap down.

I could be completely wrong… wouldn’t be the first time and certainly won’t be the last… but the way James got snappy with the ideas in my post sort of suggested to me that BioWare is making a game that does have levels; does have a quest series that keeps people on rails and doesn’t have the kind of intelligent crafting system that made the original incarnation of Star Wars Galaxies so damn great at first.

Because you’d think that if BioWare WASN’T making such a game, the likes of James could sit back, smugly confident with proceedings and if he DID need to make a reply it would be more along the lines of, “Well, just you wait and see…” instead of being all snappy about it.

It makes me rather sad, actually, that if BioWare’s new MMORPG is Star Wars-based (and all signs certainly point towards that, although it’s not 100% confirmed), that it could be a shadow of the original Star Wars Galaxies when, five years on, it should be SO MUCH MORE.

The MMORPG industry is a strange beast, isn’t it? I mean, can anyone really make any sense out of it? Everywhere I go on the Internet – forums, blogs, etc – I see discussions about the genre which typically feature the same kinds of comments, over and over again:

* People hate endless quest grinding to an arbitrary level cap which, in truth, could be 20 levels higher, or lower, and it seemingly wouldn’t make any difference.

* People hate the quests themselves, which still revolve around, “Kill 10 of this monster” or “Deliver this letter to someone a really long way away (so you’ll waste the next two hours of your life)”.

* People hate that “the best” content in games is usually reserved for the endgame, which not only takes time to level to, it’s often, weirdly, also the most under-developed in many ways.

So, tell me, besides the obvious question of why any of us bother with MMORPGs if there’s so much to hate in the way they’re designed in the first place, why aren’t these games being designed different? Designed smarter? Designed to be more fun? It’s crazy!

I’ve long held the belief that MMORPGs are increasingly heading in the wrong direction. They are trying to be single-player games with lots of people logged in at the same time. This is such an absurd way to design a MMO game world. Why? Because the nature of the world offers itself to being an environment where people can actually exist – Second Life, style – and should be able to do what they please.

This might mean opening a bar and crafting a dozen flavours of beer to sell to people, or it might mean venturing into a nearby forest and seeing what adventure can be found. MMORPGs should be real, breathing, living worlds where you can do what you please… not be placed on a conveyer belt that takes you from one quest to the next, until you are an arbitrary “level” that doesn’t really mean anything, when you stop to think about it, beyond the rather mindless, “I have played the game long enough to be this level”. Yawn-a-rama.

I think Star Wars Galaxies was honestly on the right track in its original incarnation. You could make a character be whatever you wanted to be. And by repeated actions, you “levelled up” your skills, rather than your character. So you could, conceivably, pick up a rifle and go and be a farmer on the frontier of some planet, processing materials and making money. Or you could opt to be some kind of super swordsman; a mercenary for hire. Or you could collect parts for a spaceship and fly up into space. Whatever you wanted to do… whatever you wanted to be… Star Wars Galaxies gave you a good shot at doing it. And doing it in the Star Wars universe, to boot!

Was it perfect? No, because no game can be. Ever. And, especially in the case of something new like Galaxies, it was always going to take refinement. Of course, let the record show that such “refinement”, when it finally came along, actually took the game in the opposite direction to where it was intended to go in the first place and it will go down in history as one of the most botched game revamps in history. But that’s maybe another rant for another time.

The original Star Wars Galaxies – and the passion with which “true” MMORPG gamers still show for it – is proof that an MMORPG game world can be so much more than a map with a conveyer belt of quests stuck on top of it. Game worlds can be alive and real and vital… the perfect recipe for repeat customers wanting to log in month after month to continue their “life” in the game. Right now, however, developers only seem to see “x” number of quests @ “x” length of time to complete = six months guaranteed revenue. The problem with that, however, is that people’s attention spans are rapidly decreasing with this method of MMORPG design.

A developer needs to get out there and take a stand by making a truly sandbox style of MMORPG, to show that it can be done, and that there is a market for it. Now, will such a game confuse the hell out of “the WoW kids” who will be bewildered by the lack of levels? Undoubtedly. Will those same kids be confused with the concept of characters being classless, hence it’s not as easy to plan a fight without the archetypes of tank, healer and DPS? Yep… and it thrills me to think of that, actually. You see, MMORPGS have been dumbed down to the max and someone, somewhere, needs to show that this need not be the case for people who want something more from their gaming than being pushed from quest to quest, zone to zone, doing EXACTLY the same thing everyone else is doing, ad infinitum.

Bioware’s forthcoming MMORPG, widely tipped to be Star Wars-based, is on everyone’s mind at present. I can’t mention it here, or on my personal blog, without a flurry of responses. People are crazy for it. People want to think about it. People want to talk about it.

So in the timeless words of C-3PO, “Here we go again.”

You see, I recently pulled out issue zero-and-a-half (yes, I just said zero-and-a-half), of the Star Wars Legacy comic book. I hadn’t looked at it for a little while and, as I turned the pages with increasing pace, it quickly dawned on me that here, in my slightly-shaking hands, was actually the perfect basis of a fantastic MMORPG.

Actually, scratch that… not just a fantastic MMORPG, but actually the MMORPG I seriously hope Bioware is making.

Issue zero-and-a-half is a backgrounder on the Star Wars Legacy era (and, for the record, so was the special 25-cent issue zero of the comic, but it was only half the length so wasn’t as in-depth a reference). Basically the action is set 125 years after Return of the Jedi, which means the universe feels familiar to us – with Imperials, the Alliance, Jedi, Sith, Hutts, Bounty Hunters, etc, all having a slice of the storyline – yet is also far enough away from the movies, that not only are the likes of Han Solo, Princess Leia, etc, long gone, even characters we have come to know through the EU novels, like Jacen and Jaina Solo, Ben Skywalker, etc, have passed away as well. Besides the occasional (drug induced) appearance of a “blue glowie” Luke Skywalker, the Legacy era is at the same time familiar, yet also a gorgeous blank slate in many ways. It’s the future, after all.

Now, just being “the future” isn’t the only reason I think this era would make a great MMORPG setting. When you look at the factions involved in the storyline, and the characters inside those factions, you can imagine all sorts of cool possibilities. Allow me to elaboarate:

The Sith Empire: Totally bad-ass guys. Not only are there multiple Darth’s running around (as the Sith in this era have ditched the whole “Rule of Two” concept), they have armies, fleets… and all the Imperial Moffs working for them. I can see this faction really appealing to a lot of people because they are the ultimate bad guys.

The “true” Empire: Then, of course, you have what the comics describe as the “true” Empire, led by Emperor Fel as a thorn in the Sith Empire’s side. This is another cool faction, with a notable class of characters called the Imperial Knights who are neither dark or light Jedi… but more grey. I’ve included a picture of some Imperial Knights at the start of this entry. Another majorly appealing faction.

The Galactic Alliance: A faction for the underdog-friendly gamers as the Galactic Alliance has been totally smashed by the Sith Empire. It would take gamers back to the whole concept of being a group of “good guys” fighting “bad guys” – but in a whole new context. Jedi and also Yuuzhan Vong would be part of this faction.

The Underworld: A fourth faction for the crime- or Bounty Hunter-oriented gamers out there. This is another cool faction which has enough appeal to be a viable force. Nothing like building your own crime syndicate and watching the credits start rolling in!

I mean, can you imagine it? The four factions all have something extremely neat to offer and, I think, the game would be a lot more rounded than a game that revolved around “Sith and Jedi” in the Old Republic. In actual fact, this would be the perfect antidote to everyone wanting to be a Jedi or Sith in such a game. Here, you have Force-using, lightsaber-wielding classes spanning across three factions, not to mention a whole host of other cool characters that we haven’t been able to play before. How much fun would it be to play a Yuuzhan Vong warrior, for example, tossing thud bugs at your enemies, before engaging with an amphistaff? Or a Yuuzhan Vong shaper, using biotechnology to either heal or destroy?

The more cool classes a game has, the more the users would spread themselves out, rather than clustering around, say, Jedi and Dark Jedi, as I fear they will naturally do in an Old Republic MMORPG – and the whole basis for my left-of-centre suggestion that Jedi shouldn’t be a playable class in an Old Republic MMORPG.

And what if the storylines in the comics gave an ongoing background to the changing face of the game world? You could read about a big space battle in the comic, log into the game, and be sent on missions relating to that battle! Heck, you could become PART of the battle you just read about in the comic! That would be amazing!

The Legacy comic series is so much more alive than the Old Republic stories and, in my opinion, has a more “Wild West” feel, which is also what made the original Star Wars movies so popular as well; especially A New Hope. Firefly fans might also appreciate the look and feel of some of the technology, with Cade Skywalker using some decidedly Wild West-looking blasters at times, not a million miles away from the kind of weapons Mal Reynolds uses in that TV series.

So… Bioware… you probably can’t change the path you’re on at this time… but if you are actually working on a Star Wars Legacy MMORPG, instead of the KotOR-based game that everyone thinks you’re working on, you might have just hit the jackpot on the freshest and coolest Star Wars era to be making a game about.

My fingers, and toes, are crossed. I want to be an Imperial Knight!