Ahh soo people are talking about the lore now. Interesting. For me I am okay with an original lore of how things came about, but for the world I think there needs to be different things going on. You can look at your life being a series of events. Most of these events in the game will probably be entangled with each other, but that doesn't make them not apart of the world.
I tended to create some lore in EQ1 that were just for some enjoyment, and other guildies liked it too. I did a lore about the blackburrow gnoll Tranix and the werewolf outside at the enterance of karanas that would spawn at night. Tranix was very high level and would patrol the enterance of blackburrow, but never attacked any players, even when you were fighting a gnoll in front of him. I also noticed that he had a scar on one of his eyes. So I came up with the lore of Tranix venturing to Karana and had a run in with the werewolf and got seriously injured and was saved by a human traveling to Qeynos. It was much deeper than that, but that was the basic outline of the lore.
Little things like that make the game feel more alive imo. I had an idea for pantheon where you had a small chance of partchment with writing on it to drop from random mobs that had information or parts of a story in that area. You can collected these partchments and try to create a lore book out of these partchments by being a scribe or something and see all of the little mini stories that go throughout the zone, whether they be disputes, or past fights. Anything really and complete a lore book for people who love finding those things.
I feel that the world should grow deeper rather than simply broader after each expansion. I had a certain feeling during EQ2 when I took a multi-year break and realized that the old world was its boring old self while the newer parts were too distant and fickle to ever care about. Many, many years later there is only abandonment, emptiness in those zones. The world apparently had a purpose, but I had no interest in it when I saw it! Without others having interest in the going-on's in these zones, I cannot have a reason to do anything...due to my emotions.
Visiting Velious in EQ2 is like feeling abandoned now. Where is everyone? There were definately lofty stories written about it all, but isn't it better to show the story rather than tell it? Having other players around by itself leads to a different feeling than being alone, even if its easy to get a group with LFG tools. People want to prove their capabilities to others, but game zones are now too large and empty, and now the worlds themselves have become too unbearably large. GW2 released its Path of Fire expansion not even an year ago, but it already feels empty and purposeless.
If our goal seems too distant and we feel alone, separated from the world...what type of "goal" would work? It is not a wise decision to create a larger open world if the population of the servers is too small. I literally spent a lot of my time in GW2 in a single zone just because everyone casually fought the same mobs there despite their level.
Zones in Pantheon are vertical, meaning that a single zone can be made bigger. Zones seem big enough to actually hide entrances to new zones. I know little less than what was shown in the livestreams, but what I've experienced with other games stays the same. Everyone lacks purpose in a large world that rarely changes. An NPC that has a purpose is a much better addition than ten that do nothing at all (this is a social game!).
I feel that the purpose of the game should change as the world evolves, but that no one should be told about it. Exploration is everyone's first instinct when facing the unknown. There should be a sense that something in the world would appear at any given moment, such as a new zone from an entrance that everyone has always pondered about a mystical creature that hardly ever appears and that very few people believe exists. Maybe a random town would be attacked out of the blue that changes the town a small amount and leads to a new area in an old zone that people actually wanted to get to.
There is a big difference between a GTA 5 single player world that is very real-looking, but emotionally blank...and a world that has purposely placed inhibitions to make others wonder what the world has hiding under plain sight. Instead of making the world bigger as a whole, make the existing parts larger. Rather than give a new land mass, make a very large tower that everyone can see from far away so that people can just point to it...that is in itself giving purpose to your character's existence.
Make some things really, really hard...but in a way that makes one wonder. Create a small "dungeon" with level 70-100 mobs when the max level is 50 or a dungeon that is completely under an ocean of lava that no one knows how to get to. Create a "questline" that is unsolvable as if the solution came from the future when a landslide occurs and opens a new area, but give clues as to why no one has solved it before-hand. Create an annoying prophet NPC that everyone wants to just beat up until all the crazy things he says starts happening. Make super random and very rare events like a 1/10000 chance "alien encounter" that starts increasing chances over-time. Its amazing to wonder just what is hidden in a world that everyone has apparently become familiar with...it keeps changing and getting deeper.
How about a zone that is like the Hole in EQ, but it keeps getting deeper and broader? It gets so deep that there is absolutely nothing below except emptiness and extreme heat. No one knows if its actually a mystery waiting to be solved, but it gives emotional depth if more and more things keep appearing there...skeletons and melted swords. Classic EQ2 had a type of world that was very mysterious, but new expansions did not make the existing world any deeper, preferring to make new land-masses (since Kunark, Faydwer, Odus, etc. were "missing").
Kittik said:Are we just grinding to max level and waiting for raids, or are we trying to accumulate wealth to buy a title and land, or trying to usurp the monarchy, or trying to unlock the mystries of dark sea to be able to unlock a new continent? Or just raise fishing to max level until we hook Cthulhu and win the game?
This isn't hypothetical, this is an actual question. I know there will be plenty to "do" in pantheon, but from doing all of it, what are we looking to do? It's already been made clear that we aren't the chosen one, that storyline for MMO's ended long ago and is now an Off-Line only concept. Is one of us on each server going to raise from the fallen and asend to the Pantheon? Is that my goal, to try to check every box so that when the time comes I may be the one to asend? Or am I trying to stop evil from taking over the world (look at Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted, neat idea and I logged into the game a month or so ago (after years away) and the game has literally, been taken over by evil). We are suppsed to, as a server, be trying to unlock secrets to the world so we can continue on with explortation? Am I supposed to be investing in "nodes" to earn regional favor and via for royalty? Or are we supposed to collectivly build new cities from the ground up?
The only goal I want to do it see every last piece of grass in the game.
Mathir said:There needs to be a reason for why our character exists and a goal he is hoping to achieve
I don't think this is true. I guess if you realy need a reason you can invent any one you want.
Iksar said:I think we are trying to figure out wtf happened to our gods and why civilizations are being plucked from other worlds onto Terminus.
Boom. More reason than reason can reason.