I'm Considering Divorcing My MMOG

My son is 11-years old and had discovered Pen & Paper RPGs. He’s even started with D&D. I suppose I should be proud. I remember, in 1976, drawing dungeons on graph paper for the boy next door. I graduated to MMOGs with Asheron’s Call in 1999. He started with Asheron’s Call in 2000 – earning his first 2 Cub Scout belt loops for Computers and Chess. He played Chess in Asheron’s Call. It is a story I tell often. Like mother like son?

I have, in some way or another, been involved in RPGs all of my life. When I gave up rolling characters I provided beer and pizza and a comfortable place for the guys whose girlfriends “didn’t get it”. Sometimes, I’d sit in and run a character if someone was missing. I liked MUDs, but simply didn’t have the time to devote to the experience. I knew early on that once I started down that virtual path, I would be forever lost.

We, of this “grande” community are not as large as one might suppose. Same said 11-year old wants to be DM for the first time. Mom wants to be a kleptomaniac bard. (He so hates me *grins*.) When discussing all of the really wonderful ways to mess with a DM that exist, a friend - in England, over Skype – said it was “just like "Eric and the Dread Gazebo". Apparently, I’d missed this one.

Apocryphal, I know. I didn’t know an internet legend of a story. That is, until he started reading it to me...

“In the early 70s, Ed Whitchurch ran...”

“Wait, Ed and Debbie Whitchurch?”

Yeah, I know them. They gamed at my house at least once a month for more than 10 years. Ed was in my wedding. I started labor at his house during a Christmas party. My husband, then in high school, was at the famous Dread Gazebo incident. I know Eric Sorenson of the “I shoot a +3 arrow at it” fame.

Who needs MySpace or Facebook to connect us around the world? We have P&P RPGs and now MMOGs. Except...well...

Where once I was married to them (and in them) I don’t seem to be playing them much recently. I filed for legal separation last year when I stopped playing six different games. I’m considering divorce.

Someone once said, “You will only love two MMOs, your first and the one you’re looking forward to next.” I hope I one day find where I read this because I’ve repeated it so often I’ve found it attributed to me. (I didn’t say it.) I did love my first MMO, but it wasn’t, by far, my first RPG and I’d played MUDs.

What I loved about my first MMO was – like every person – the social aspect: That ability to attach an avatar to the perceived personality of your “friends”. You never forget that, even if the experience is bad, it is indelible.

For me, my first MMO was also a training ground in game design. I was one of the few, fortunate people who was able to connect with the developer and publisher and learn just how this “thing” worked. Why did they make decisions? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? It was to be the foundation for what I do now, 9 years later

I still love MMO design. Of all of the genres, and the myriad of different systems, I find it the most inspirational because the designers take the most risks. They have some of the most spectacular failures in the industry. But when they succeed, even the little stuff, it sets precedent for years to come.

For me, it’s rather like NASCAR. Watching them drive round the track is exciting! (But not because they go in an oval... All... Freaking... Day... Long.) Because when they wreck, oh man is it awesome! There is a limit to human physiology and mechanics; because of this there will only be incremental differences in speed records over time, but to see someone make a new record? That’s just cool.

I especially adore MMOG designers. They’re insane. They have to be. They design for MMOG players. (I’m one of them, I’m allowed!)

The stupidity that has followed the success of World of Warcraft has ensured that no designer can ever make a successful game and be satisfied. Success is no longer defined as being profitable, having a stable player base, moderate growth and enough revenue to produce another game. Success is now defined as competing with WoW. *beats head against table*

Actually, that is unfair to a degree. The entire game industry has unreasonable profit margins placed upon it by investors. Music, movies and certainly books are not expected to bring in the margins imposed upon games to be considered successful. And if that game is an MMOG, the margin is just plain stupid.

But the designers are creative. They’re caring. And if you catch them before the jade dragon colors their world they want to try new, exciting and disruptive ideas. It is amazing and infectious and I can only liken it to a writer in the middle of a story – they ARE that story; they ARE that game design.

The profits. Perhaps that’s part of the problem.

MMOGs are no longer about making fun, exciting, profitable games. Jeff Freeman aptly points out "there has only ever been one MMO". Someone, please tell me what I’ve been playing all of these years because that game? It wasn’t the one...

And because of this, I, me, Ophelea/Cassandra, Kelly – this person – I become invested as a member of the press and as a person in new ideas, in new companies and what they try to do when excited at the beginning. As time passes I see the bloat, the creep, the mandate to be more than the conception until ultimately, failure is the only option.

That there have been so few successful MMOG launches in previous years doesn’t discourage me. That several have been so close to launch and shut down doesn’t either. But because I AM so close to the picture, because I care about the people who make the games, I care about the people who play them – I play them, my kids play them – I weary of the reasons for so few success and closures.

I especially weary of the negativity of my peers and am myself disappointed to find myself in some small way parroting their doom and gloom. Do I think the industry is in a freefall? Certainly not. But I think that everyone – player, press, PR, producer and investor (couldn’t come up with another P) – has lost sight of what makes these games special. Yes, they are cash cows. But so is a slot machine.

The creativity inherent in the design, the amazing depths to which the players go to build a community around their hobby, the nurturing that the developers give to their ART – these are the qualities that MAKE THEM CASH COWS. Remove those from the equation and you are left with fewer successes and multiple closings because you look for formulaic wins.

Am I playing less? Yes. And no. I don’t play any single game any longer.

I cannot afford the time to feel beholden to a group. I have children, school, a site – a fear of caring about a game again. It is something I miss – the camaraderie, the shared experience. But I cannot do it.

But I play a LOT more games casually. As I sit here writing this I realize that in the last month I have played Guild Wars, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Dungeon Runners, and several online TCGs. So, one traditional MMORPG among them and many that allow for quick play.

It may not be time for divorce, but counseling is in order if I am to save this marriage.

Now, I have a kleptomaniac bard (with pickpocket and buffoonery) to prepare. My son is SOO in for it!

[SamClemens]

I remember the first time I heard that story.