A few months ago, we ran a Leaderboard poll asking players what kind of live studio-led events they want out of MMORPGs. By way of example, I compared the types of GM-run live events I saw in Ultima Online and EverQuest. In Ultima Online, we often saw long-running plotlines, mysterious NPCs, decorated special locations, dungeon crawls, and weddings galore. In EverQuest, I saw weddings, yes, but also GMs running around massacring newbies to get the highbies to come take them out (which wasn’t such a grand time as you lost experience on death). In Asheron’s Call, well, don’t take my word for it – just listen to Andrew talk about some of the biggest MMO events that ever took place in the genre.
Such GM events – the good ones, at least – are the subject of Saga of Lucimia’s weekly dev blog, which ought to make the majority of you who voted for plot, roleplaying, and activities other than endless murder in your event happy.
“Over the years, that type of interaction faded away as it became too ‘cost prohibitive’ for companies to maintain the type of staff required to create such unique events, and these days you are hard-pressed to find a GM logged into any game, much less get customer support to answer your emails in a timely fashion,” Lucimia Creative Director Tim “Renfail” Anderson maintains. “Cash shops and loot boxes are the name of the game these days. Game masters? What are those?”
It goes without saying that the devs plan such events in Lucimia when it launches.
“Presently, I’m in the middle of preparing a storyline that will take place over multiple test sessions for our Early Access community, starting here very soon in 2018. Our developers will be playing the parts of NPCs, and players will be not only testing the game, but also roleplaying through these storylines over the rest of the year (and potentially beyond), which will also tie into the tabletop game that is currently being worked on. […] I think it’s safe to say, given our obsession with lore and storyline and tabletop history, that the one thing you will never see from our MMORPG is a game where the zones always remain the same, or quest lines that always remain the same. A GM presence is mandatory for us; it’s not an optional ‘service’ we are offering players.”
https://youtu.be/vMV1p4ktdQU
