Penny Arcade Expo 2007 Overview

Contributor Brook Willeford is back from PAX07 in Seattle and his first article from the event is in. Hit jump and read his overview of the event and tidbits of information about the MMOGs presented at PAX.

PAX Means Anything But Peace For MMOGs: MMOG developers talk about their upcoming projects and the future of MMOGs at the 2007 Penny Arcade Expo.

The Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX, is quickly becoming one of the largest and most important video game conventions in the United States. Each year of its three-year existence it has doubled in attendance, clocking in at somewhere around 30,000 or 40,000 (depending on who you ask) this year in its new home at the Washington State Trade and Convention Center. While many of the companies were unveiling new single- or multi-player games, there were a fare share of MMOs being shown off and discussed as well.

Head of the class were CCP with EVE Online and a few hints about their upcoming World of Darkness MMO, EA Mythic with Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, Flying Lab Software with Pirates of the Burning Sea, Turbine with Lord of the Rings Online, and ArenaNet/NCSoft with Guild Wars and City of Heroes/City of Villains. ArenaNet and Turbine didn’t have much news to spread, although of course they had computers set up so that people could play their games. ArenaNet also hosted a huge tournament and a number of panels over the course of the weekend, ranging from a look back at the development of Guild Wars, and a bit about what it’s like to work at ArenaNet.

CCP, Flying Lab, and EA, on the other hand, had a few things to say about their soon-to-be-released (or soon-to-be-upgraded in the case of EVE Online) games, but we’ll get to that later. There were also several talks with implications for MMOs in general, including one on the “Social Aspects of Gaming,” and one on “The Future of MMOs,” both of which included several important personages from the MMO industry.

The panel on the “Social Aspects of Gaming” featured Noah Ward – Lead Designer for EVE Online, Ilja Rotelli – Director of Online Media for Wizards of the Coast, John Porcaro – Senior Group Manager for the XBox Live and Games for Windows Community, and Teresa Pudenz – Public Relations Specialist for Flying Lab Games, moderated by Jeff Kalles of Penny Arcade. They started their discussion by addressing the John Gabriel Greater Internet F**kwad Theory, which is to say “Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total F**kwad.” Given that griefers are a common problem on many—if not most—MMOs, this is something that most MMO gamers should be familiar with. The various panelists had a wide variety of solutions. Noah Ward suggested that people who are cutthroat are a natural part of EVE Online, given the rough nature of corporations in that MMO, but that anyone who stepped outside the game to harass any other players was of course to be dealt with quickly and harshly. Ilja Rotelli went further; he stated that f**kwads made the folks over at WotC “want to kill something”—and that their choice of things to kill was anonymity. Since WotC’s new online service, Gleemax, is directed at bringing people together to play games in person, they will be trying to strip anonymity from accounts, connecting them directly to the people behind them. He noted that with the DCI had been “punishing players [who stepped out of line] since 1996.” All of the panelists agreed that the best way to deal with problem players was to address them directly, either in-game or on the game forums, before they really got out of hand. Teresa Pudenz mentioned that a great way to deal with griefers and other problem players is to get them involved, as they’re often the most passionate players of the game. She pointed to having games with a great deal of user-created content as a great way to get them involved in a positive manner. Another key theme was that the communities can and should police themselves. One trend noted by John Porcaro is that account names gather a reputation, and since the players have invested both time and (in the case of MMOs) money in their accounts, many people are loathe to do anything that will reflect poorly on their account. There was a great deal of interest from both the panelists and the audience members in more tools to allow players to manage who can interact with them in-game. As a whole, the panelists acknowledged the existence of griefers and other problem players, but were of the opinion that some of them were just trouble in real life, and should usually be forced to move on for the good of the community, the rest could be “brought into the fold” by being specifically addressed by company representatives or by being given opportunities to provide content for the games they love.

Although the panelists at the discussion of “Social Aspects of Gaming” touched on issues involving MMOs quite frequently, the panel on “The Future of MMOs” was, understandably, entirely focused on them. The panel was made up of Kevin Maginn – Lead Designer for Pirates of the Burning Sea, Matt Miller – Lead Designer for City of Heroes and City of Villains, Ed Stark – the former Lead Designer for Dungeons and Dragons and now the World Designer for an unannounced MMO, Chris McKibbin – Executive Producer on Gods and Heroes, and Noah Ward – Lead Designer for EVE Online. The discussion was moderated by Jason Justice from Ntreev USA, although since the panel consisted of audience members asking questions of the panelists, there wasn’t much for Jason to do except put in a few opinions of his own and let the audience know when it was time to wrap up. I’ll be going into more detail on exactly what questions were asked and how they were answered in another article, but the general thrust of things was that Developers are just starting to understand how MMOs work with the various audiences around the world, and that given this increasing stability of purpose, they’re just now starting to be able to really innovate, both in game design and in payment plans. There was a lot of discussion of the micropayments plan, where the game itself is free to play, or has only a very small subscription fee, and players are able to purchase items or services in-game as they wish. Another point given a great deal of weight was the fact that because of the usually small size of MMO development teams, they can’t provide as large a world and as broad an experience as they would like to, so there will be a great deal of opportunity in many future games for player-generated content, either simply cosmetic changes or entirely character-driven quests or plots.

While the panels were well attended (especially the one of “The Future of MMOs”), the exhibition hall was always packed. Despite the packed house, the developers were always willing to chat about what they had going on, even if they weren’t able to say much. Jeremy Albert, an Associate Producer at White Wolf (recently merged with CCP), was happy to talk to me about the upcoming World of Darkness MMO, but there really wasn’t much to say. They’re still building out their team, and the design is only in the first stages. They’re definitely looking to steep the MMO in the rich, decade-and-a-half old World of Darkness (the first WoD book, Vampire: The Masquerade came out in 1991), focusing on the theme and subject matter. Although they’ll certainly delve into subjects touched on in the pen-and-paper roleplaying games, they probably won’t be sharing continuity in both directions—while events introduced in the pen-and-paper game will probably affect the MMO, the reverse likely won’t be widely true. It was, however, carefully noted that this may change during the design process, given how little has been nailed down at this point.

Another game drawing on fantastically deep background material is EA Mythic’s Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (fittingly abbreviated as WAR). Eric Correll, the Product Manager, and Carrie Gouskos, an Associate Producer on the project, went on at some length about a few of the features that they see as making WAR unique and exciting. What they had to say can be summed up in three features: RvR, Public Quests, and the Tome of Knowledge. I’ll have a more detailed write-up of what they had to say shortly, but I’ll touch on each of these three features briefly now. RvR, or Realm vs. Realm, is the basis of WAR. Everything you’ll be doing will contribute to the ongoing battle between the forces of order (the good guys) and the forces of destruction (the bad guys, naturally). Eric Correll noted that you “won’t be out there picking daisies,” you’ll be in the middle of a war. Public Quests will play a large part in RvR also; they allow players to join a quest simply by wandering into an area. They can also leave the area—and the quest—at any time. No longer will you have to wait around for your 39 best friends to all be ready to play. Those of you who prefer the exploratory or social aspects of MMOs won’t be disappointed, however. The Tome of Knowledge, on which Carrie Gouskos has worked a great deal, will not only detail the decades-old history of the Warhammer world and provide its trademark dark humor, but it will also track the achievements of your character, ranging from how many of each creature you’ve killed, to whether or not you’ve climbed the top of Karag Dron (Thunder Mountain), to how many people you’ve interacted with, among others. Carrie and her team are working hard to find all the spots Explorers might be interested in reaching and make sure that the Tome acknowledges those conquests, as well as looking for social stats to track. Altogether, WAR looks like it will appeal not only to fans of the Warhammer universe, but also to any fantasy MMO players out there looking for something with an extremely interactive world.

Flying Lab’s Pirates of the Burning Sea is also looking to engage its players and get them involved in an extremely serious way. They’ve set things up so that players can contribute directly to the game by submitting flags, whole ships, and other graphical content, and have had a huge response from their players even before the game has released. Pirates will also allow the players to control—to a large degree at least—the economy, with players being able to build any ship in the game, up to and including the giant 104-gun first rate ships-of-the-line. Most of these larger projects will require groups of players working together in order to accomplish them, although one beta-tester has been working on building a 104 all on his own (it’s been three months thus far and he’s not done yet). Not only will players be able to create their own content (although of course it’ll have to go through Flying Lab first, especially considering John Gabriel’s Theory discussed above), but they’ll also be able to have a serious impact on the game world—ports both major and minor will change hands between the factions (Pirates, French, Spanish, and English) based on player actions.

Interactivity—between the players and the game and between the players and the development team—seems to have been the theme of this year’s PAX. Looking ahead to the next year or two of MMOs, and the changes to be made to those already out there, players have a lot to enjoy. It’s a good time to be an MMO player.