Online Worlds Roundtable #16, Part Five

The fifth and final part of RPGVault’s 16th online worlds roundtable rounds up their discussion on storytelling in MMOs. They quiz 4 more developers, including Turbine’s Craig Alexander.

I believe we’ve done a good job at non-linear storytelling and detailing a fictional world such as Middle-earth. Specifically, we’ve created an environment where players can enter the game at any time and experience the Tolkien fiction through a series of quests; the story unfolds at their own pace, and often in the order they desire as they advance their characters. The current state of MMOG storytelling is strong, but much work remains if we are to advance the medium.

The same flexibility of our non-linear storytelling mentioned above also introduces a number of challenges. For example, the major characters from Tolkien’s world exist in multiple regions of the game, and we must ensure players encounter them at the proper times. For example, Aragorn meets up with the newbie player in Bree while waiting for the Hobbits to arrive, but also offers up high-level quests in Rivendell later in the fiction as the fellowship forms. In order to prevent timeline and continuity problems, the Bree version of Aragorn must be placed behind a gated instance so the player cannot encounter him again following the player’s visit to Rivendell.