Age of Conan Director Craig Morrison, Part Two: Gamers are Sociopaths, EQ Clones are Dead, and Why Nobody Reads Quest Text

By Steven Crews | May 16, 2009 | | Filed under: Features, Interviews | Tags: Age of Conan, Craig Morrison

The MMO Gamer: On that subject, are you a role-player?

Craig Morrison: In MMOs, hit and–not so much.

The MMO Gamer: Me either. To tell all my shameful secrets, I was a big D&D nerd in high school. I was the guy with the Magic deck and the polyhedral dice in my backpack.

But, that never really transferred over into MMOs. I just don’t see the same utility. I mean, when you’re sitting with your friends around a table, you have the freedom to say and do anything-within the bounds of the rulebook, and the polyhedral dice, of course.

The story is anything that the DM wants to tell you. But, I’ve never understood how people can role-play in the current crop of MMOs. I know it’s possible because there always exist role-play servers. But…

Craig Morrison: I think it’s possible. I mean, I think role-playing is different things to different people.

Anarchy Online had a very strong role-playing community, always did, and still does.

I think I completely get what the people… it’s escapism. They want to be the character. It’s just not the way I have played MMOs.

I first played Ultima Online, and EverQuest, and I very quickly got acclimatized to being a very content focused gamer. But I definitely understand that, working on a game like Anarchy Online you couldn’t avoid it.

I do love telling stories, I love the story telling elements, even MMOs. And it was great to work with Anarchy Online because it’s kind of got the combination of both. It’s got really the most hardcore character development system of any MMO out there.

The extreme nature of the skill system, the open skill system in AO means that you need an applied math degree to truly maximize your character.

But at the same time it’s in this very fleshed out world where we were constantly adding story, and constantly explaining the back-story, and constantly developing the political situation.

It was kind of a symbiotic relationship in that game. Where you had both elements very strongly tied together. The best item in the game would be the best item in the game with stats and all of that, and then you’d write a six paragraph back-story for the item that would go in the item description that appears in the game when the player clicks on it.

The MMO Gamer: My personal favorite among all the items in the game was the Monster Sunglasses, from Christmas 2003 or something like that. The description was simply, “110 percent more cool.”

Craig Morrison: My favorite was always the lead pipe. Which had just, “Good for starting conversations with plumbers.” Anarchy Online always had a good sense of humor to it.

The MMO Gamer: You invoked UO in that answer, so I have to ask now: Did you play pre-Trammel or post- Trammel?

Craig Morrison: Pre.

The MMO Gamer: Ah, those were the days.

Craig Morrison: I moved straight to EQ as soon as it came out.

The MMO Gamer: Do you think we can ever go back to that freedom of pre-Trammel UO? You know, kill anyone, anywhere, anytime, loot the corpse, then break into their house and steal all of their stuff for good measure?

Craig Morrison: I actually didn’t like it.

The MMO Gamer: You didn’t?

Craig Morrison: I think the consensual nature of PvP is actually important. I think an open world is good for those people that want it.

The MMO Gamer: I don’t know… I think there’s something to be said for that visceral feeling, that you could be killed at any moment.

Craig Morrison: I think it would be fine if players still played the way that they did in those very early days. But, likewise, what I said with the philosophy of design earlier, in kind of always reacting to how your players play the game not how you’d like them to… Players don’t play games like that anymore.

There is no honor amongst thieves. In any game.

The MMO Gamer: There wasn’t even in the pre-Trammel days.

Craig Morrison: But there was to a degree, because people didn’t instantly kill you everywhere.

They killed you for a reason. They wanted your stuff. Or they wanted you to prevent you from mining that node, or they were playing as robbers and they wanted to accumulate wealth and you happened to have some.

The MMO Gamer: So griefing has gotten worse, in your opinion?

Craig Morrison: Griefing has gotten worse, and I think players need to be protected from it.

Because even in early UO, I still felt I could play the game. I was still able to play the game, with a little bit of danger. In some of the modern games that are fully open PvP wise, I feel like I can’t play the game. You know, I can’t level.

I can’t do anything, because the second I step out of the reach of a guard…

The MMO Gamer: Yeah, you’re going to be dead.

Craig Morrison: And that’s one of those situations you have to evolve and develop. I mean, it’s kind of cool, you can see it as well even in the way the game is played, because of changes we’ve made in certain areas of Age of Conan. And we go, “Ok, you can PvP here now.”

And they’re like, “Yeah, but if we PvP there, then we can’t gank people at res points!” Or, “We can’t hide, there is a quest-giver there, we’re ganking the person who is doing the quest.”

And so you’re not interested in the PvP for the challenge. You are interesting in ganking. It has become a game-play style. You are interested in making the other player’s game experience miserable.

The MMO Gamer: Shadowbane had that problem when I tried it, you couldn’t get out of the newbie village without being ganked fifty times.

Craig Morrison: Yes, exactly. And that’s what I have an issue with. I don’t think we should ever as developers support people’s playstyle being, “I want to make other people’s game experience miserable.”

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