
There’s so much blatant — and lazy! — copying in the world of entertainment and arts that anything novel is to be cherished. I’ve always thought that if you’re going to make a game, movie, book, or TV series, you at least have to have one creative idea that sets you apart. A “hook” that instantly captures attention and reels a prospective audience into your project.
Risk-averse MMOs often play it way too safe, but even if your game is 95% lifted from what came before, it’s imperative to craft a hook that makes it stand out. For better or for worse, here are 10 creative idea hooks we’ve seen MMO studios promoted about their games prior to launch.
WildStar: Paths
While WildStar was teeming with interesting ideas, the one that Carbine really pushed as the most innovative was “paths.” While this concept went through several design iterations, the basic idea was that players would choose a second sub-class that would tailor the gameplay according to their personal style. Cool idea… but lackluster execution. Out of all the things people remember about this game, paths probably don’t make the top 10 of that list.
Warhammer Online: Tome of Knowledge
Similar to WildStar, the WAR team went crazy in promoting all sorts of creative ideas, such as physical character changes over time and trinkets (hey, trinkets were cool). But before launch, the Tome of Knowledge got the most press as this ever-evolving in-game journal that was part map, part achievement counter, part to-do list, and part personal story. I liked a lot about it, other than the font. It wasn’t easy on the eyes.
World of Warcraft: Questing system
Due to how pervasive and adopted World of Warcraft’s questing system became in the time since 2004, it’s difficult to remember just how revolutionary it was when Blizzard announced it. Never before had an MMO built such a robust questing system as a core foundation and then made it completely intuitive to players. It really was innovative for the time and a big factor in the MMO’s success. Plus, you know your creative idea is a hit when everyone steals it.
Star Wars: The Old Republic: Choice and consequences
When showing off SWTOR to the press during its development, BioWare had a lot of cards it could put on the table. But the one that seemed to elicit the most interest from journalists and prospective players alike was next evolution of WoW’s questing system where your choices actually had consequences and each quest could end in a different fashion. This brought in more of a roleplay feel to the narrative and was (and is!) a lot of fun.
Guild Wars 2: Living world
MMOs aren’t static creations but rather ever-shifting and -growing beasts. Guild Wars 2 embraced this concept to the fullest with the idea of a “living world” where maps, characters, and places would change over time with bi-weekly updates. This concept was reinforced by roving events on the maps that propagated a feeling of dynamic modification.
Ultima Online: Living ecosystems
One of the more famous examples of a great idea with unforeseen execution is the account of Ultima Online’s developers attempting to create a living ecosystem where plants and animals would spread and interact as they would in the wild. And then players came in and did what they did best by ravaging all of the landscape like content-hungry locusts, effectively destroying the ecosystem before it had a chance to take root. But still… good idea?
The Secret World: Investigation missions
How do you take the format of quest design to the next level? Funcom strove to answer this with “investigation missions,” a special brand of quest in The Secret World. These quests would involve lateral, out-of-the-box thinking, real-world interaction, and creative approaches. They weren’t numerous, but they were awesome.
EVE Online: Permanent loss
While many MMOs sought to limit death penalties and potential loss, EVE Online founded its gameplay design on the polar opposite. It embraced the permanent loss of spacecraft, loot, and structures and potential loss of player skill points, giving more gravitas to any hostile interaction. This wasn’t a game world that would coddle you, in other words. Obviously, EVE wasn’t the first or only MMO to do this, but it sure made it a tentpole feature.
RIFT: Rift map events
MMO public events were all the rage in the late 2000s, but almost all of them were static and fixed to a location. RIFT turned entire zones into moving game boards, where hostile invasions would rampage, portals would open to start corrupting the local flora and fauna, and public events could chain one off of the other. When there was a critical mass of players, this worked pretty great and kept players on their toes.
Dungeons and Dragons Online: Game Master narrations
There are many ways that DDO juked in a different direction than the rest of the MMO crowd, and one of those was in hewing to its D&D roots by giving quests an occasional game master to offer up verbal descriptions of the area, actions undertaken, and dialogue from NPCs. There have been many game masters added over the years including a few famous voices, and these all have added a lot of flavor to the dungeon crawls.
