What MMO devs could learn from Skyrim

I, like almost everyone in the gaming world, have been playing far too much Skyrim; I’ve been splitting my time between killing bandits, hunting wild animals, bathroom breaks and, whenever a nasty bill comes through the door, work. I haven’t eaten in a fortnight, not unless you count raw meat and an apple pie I found in a barrel in Whiterun, although the doctor at the emergency room couldn’t be convinced.

 This is a single player game that is capturing imaginations like almost no other game before it. Even this long after release it remains one of the most played games on Steam, hundreds of thousands of people are killing Giants, raiding tombs and playing hide and seek with young girls every day (hilarious to watch in third person mode). There’s something in the longevity of Skyrim that MMO developers should analyse and, of course, so should we.

The People

Attempts to make single player games in the style of MMOs have largely been unsuccessful to the point that it very rarely happens any more. Final Fantasy developers Square Enix completely split their fans when they went in that direction with Final Fantasy XII and Phantasy Star Online is never really remembered for its excellent single player elements. These games tend not to be awful, but having nobody but NPCs to talk to takes something away from the “massively” part of the MMO description.
Indeed, these single player MMOs tend to have NPCs with only a couple of pre-programmed phrases, they say the same thing time and time again and, thanks to the vast number of virtual people in these games, most of the time it’s not very interesting conversation. You might find out a little bit of backstory, you might discover a particular NPC’s opinion on another NPC - it hardly gives the impression of a living breathing world.

Many MMOs suffer from a similar problem. The Multiplayer Online component tends to be relegated to PvP servers and dungeon running, maybe a chatbox in the corner of the screen, but playing alone tends to be the norm. The people giving quests tend to be two-dimensional and a means of getting you to collect useless items rather than people you get to know. You meet them, collect whichever seemingly unnecessary trinkets they request and then forget about them.

Skyrim goes one step further – I could write about the fairly wide array of voices you hear while exploring, the vast amount of written lines, but those go without saying. What makes Skyrim’s population pop is their daily routine, their opinions and their relationship with other characters. You can be walking through a town and hear a conversation between two people that has absolutely nothing to do with you about something you can have no influence on, but the fact that two people are conversing makes the world a more real place.

I realize that this is something difficult to replicate online without a huge install and an annoying amount of repetition, but for a developer with the right scope and the finances to back, giving the world a decent backstory is important but giving it a proper present is perhaps a little more important.

The Locations

MMO worlds tend to be built around levelling. You start off in the tutorial zone populated by low-level monsters and short quests. As you increase in level you come across harder monsters and longer quests, dungeons and adventures. In this respect, a lot of MMOs are quite linear – they have to be otherwise you’ll end up coming across far too difficult levelled monsters too early. You explore a certain area, perhaps unlocked at a specific level, and then fight monster after monster until you come across the boss.

Skyrim allows you to make your own mistakes, if you want to leave your comfort zone you are free to do so but prepare to run and hide when necessary. It also helps that enemies level up along with you, a method that just simply wouldn’t work if you were playing in a group with a diverse set of different levels. Obviously there is some merit to just placing you into a populated world without much more than a little light backstory and saying go where you want, rather than passively guiding people through quests.

But as an extension of that, there needs to be places to go and reasons to go there. It’s not enough that a place is beautiful, although that certainly helps, but there needs to be things there that nowhere else can offer. When I go into Skyrim, I’ll sometimes decide to walk to a new place just to see what is there because I know for a fact there’ll be a reason to visit. Whether it’s treasure or new quests, interesting people or some natural wonder, exploring Skyrim is an absolute joy.

Questing

Questing is questing, there’s never going to be some magical solution that will make it any more than what it is. You speak to somebody, you act their dogsbody, you are rewarded with gold and/or equipment. It’s the same in World of Warcraft, in Fallout and, yes, in Skyrim. I would say the difference concerns the end game – the ultimate goal. In an MMO, questing tends to be a way of shaking up the monotony. You’re still trying to level, you’re still trying to loot but you can be distracted by snippets of story. You’re levelling up so you can level up some more and do more quests (so you can continue to level up).

In Skyrim the quests seem more diverse although it might just be because you need to travel longer distances and you’re more easily distracted – you’re doing several things at once and that list is constantly growing. The story of the quest is important as well. You might just be exploring a cave, a cave made up of the same textures as every other cave in the game, but it’s why you’re there that’s important.

The Necessity to Evolve

I think the fact that one of the most standout mods coming for Skyrim adds a multiplayer component says a lot. People want to be able to interact with their friends, with new people, while exploring a world and ultimately the depth of what we play needs to evolve. Whether that means moving towards a first person MMO not unlike Bethesda’s offerings or moving in another direction entirely I’m not sure, but the limitations of the genre are starting to show and it is in games like Skyrim that the developers will find their inspiration.

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M. Growcott