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: So what you’re saying is, everyone is a murderous sociopath and they must be controlled?

Craig Morrison: In the PvP server, I think you must design to allow people to PvP in an environment where it’s actually on an even footing, with other people that want to PvP.

Because then that gets to me the essence of UO. Because the essence for me of pre-Trammel UO was pitting your skills against equally skilled PvPers, who knew the dangers, and you knew the dangers.

Now it’s not. PvP to many people is finding the weakest possible target which gives you the least amount of risk and taking them out. People don’t look for even fights anymore.

So I think forcing them to look for more even fights, naturally, I think that brings the better PvP out of the equation.

So I think, it’s actually mixed, because I don’t players react to it in the same way as they did back in those days.

The MMO Gamer: UO, I think, represented the peak of freedom in the MMO genre that perhaps we will never see again.

When EQ came out, it was essentially MUD 1 boiled down to its bare elements, with graphics layered on top.

EverQuest set the new baseline for the genre, and it seems like we’ve been taking away from it piece by piece ever since.

Craig Morrison: I’m not sure I’d agree with that. I think games like World of Warcraft actually expand on EQ.

The MMO Gamer: I thought it took away.

Craig Morrison: People say that. I played both, I’ve played all MMOs I must admit, I’m a complete MMO junkie.

The MMO Gamer: So am I. [Laughs]

Craig Morrison: I think I’ve had as much-there was as many complex coordination, planning and execution required to do the high level raids of World of Warcraft as there was in any Plane of Hate raid.

And if anything, World of Warcraft makes it more fun.

The MMO Gamer: That I would agree with.

Craig Morrison: You know EverQuest that was effort and frustration sometimes like you almost had to be military in your position in most instances.

The MMO Gamer: That was the brilliance of WoW. EverQuest took the fun parts of MUD and distilled it, took out everything basically that Brad McQuaid didn’t like about them.

And then Warcraft went back and took out the bad things about EverQuest, so you were left with only the most fun of MUDs.

Craig Morrison: I think they have actually expanded on it. I think technology has expanded on it, too.

I think correctly used, things like instancing have a very important role in MMOs. I think over time they have expanded, and like I said, our game, Anarchy Online, had a hugely complex skill system, which even I will admit that I don’t know the intricacies of fully, and I was Game Director for two years.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s come downhill, that it’s only been distilled down. I think different games have taken different takes on it, and players have reacted very differently.

I remember the very early days of exploring the zones in EQ, and meeting other players for the first time, and going through and exploring the game world.

Now it doesn’t really have as much that appeal to me, because I’ve done it in a dozen games before. I don’t necessarily want that, now. I want to get to the place that for me is the fun part of the game, so I can understand approaches which try and move away from level base because to me the most fun I’ve had in MMOs has been in the high levels.

I love an MMO that doesn’t have leveling, and then I can do the fun parts straight from the beginning because I don’t necessarily have the inclination to do it again in a different setting.

The MMO Gamer: That goes back to what we were talking about earlier, the inclination that you have to force player to do the unfun stuffs first before they get to the real meat and potatoes.

Craig Morrison: It doesn’t need to be there. To me, that doesn’t need to be there, but people are afraid, and businesses are afraid that if you take leveling out, what are they going to play?

The MMO Gamer: You just spent forty million dollars making this game, you’ve got to make sure that player has something to do for at least a month so you can get that first fifteen dollars.

Craig Morrison: Indeed, and I think all of the current crop of MMOs have shown that that’s not necessarily a key to success.

Our own game, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Lord of the Rings, none of them have broken out and got to the kind of numbers that those companies would have like them to get to, and they didn’t really do anything wrong.

The MMO Gamer: Warhammer did break a million units sold , but I believe it’s substantially lower than that at the moment.

Craig Morrison: Yes, I think three hundred thousand was the last they announced a couple of months ago.

The MMO Gamer: So probably even lower than that, now.

Craig Morrison: I don’t think there was anything fundamentally bad about any of those games. Most of them did what they set out to do pretty well. But people have changed, their standards are different.

I think you’ll see the next generation of MMOs be a little bit more adventurous, or maybe addressing niches, or trying to find a way to address things in different ways, because I think it is certainly not enough to just work off that template anymore.

The MMO Gamer: How do you be adventurous with forty million dollars?

Craig Morrison: That’s a question for other people. [Laughs]

As with anything I think it requires a degree of risk, and a degree of bravery, and believing in your product and thinking that you’ve got the right idea.

I think, what else can you do? Because now it’s proven that you can’t just copy that template.

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