Onlife #26

I've said it already, but this past E3 kind of crushed a few of my dreams. No WoW expansion, no cool handheld MMOs, and nothing that was simply startlingly "new." But what disappointed me more than I had initially realized was that no real exciting news emerged regarding console MMOs. Given how much of an emphasis the console manufacturers are putting on the online space, it's really surprising that they haven't been more proactive about talking about these kinds of games. I truly suspect that a number of console MMOs are being planned as we speak. How could they not, what with the astounding successes that major releases in this category have proven to garner? My guess is that they're running into the same problem that pretty much anyone who's attempted to design one of these games on a console has undoubtedly run into: i.e., how to make it compelling while also making it worthwhile and fun on a much simpler control interface.

In terms of streamlining the play experience that these games offer, something like World of Warcraft can't be the be-all-end-all. It actually has to be the starting point. While WoW and its contemporaries have done a great deal to relieve much of the tedium involved in progressing through an MMO, in terms of actual interface design, their advances have been pretty marginal. This, IMO, is precisely what has to happen before one of these games is truly viable on a console, outside of a particular niche. Granted, existing console MMOs, like Final Fantasy XI and EverQuest Online Adventures, have pretty healthy followings (the former more so). But it's not the level that Xbox owners have adopted a game like Halo 2. And that's what needs to happen.


So step one has to be the design of an interface that allows for, on a control pad, the sort of complexity that these games offer. If you were to take a game like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance -- effectively, Diablo on a console -- and put it in a persistent world, then you're halfway there. The problem that remains, of course, would be one of control limitation; you can't do all the crazy-complex stuff that could on a PC MMO when you can only realistically have three or four different abilities mapped to your control pad. You know from playing these games that the default "hotbar" is seldom enough to keep all the abilities you need at your disposal. Thanks to the keyboard interface, we have the option of hotbar-swapping, alternate key-bindings, and even mouse-button mapping to help us keep all our essential abilities at our disposal. Imagine if you were limited to six or eight immediately accessible buttons, max? That's what it would be like on a controller.

I don't believe that the solution is as simple as marketing a keyboard-style attachment along with a given game, either. I think that those sorts of extraneous peripherals, by nature, are a little intimidating for casual gamers. The ideal console MMO has to be really fun while requiring nothing other than the default controller for the system it's on. Whatever comes in the box is what the developers will have to design around. I'm assuming here that all of the coming gen's consoles will come equipped with voice-over IP-style headsets, and I don't think I'm wrong in doing so. Headsets will allow players to communicate without the need for a keyboard, and, perhaps, execute voice commands to activate their characters' abilities.