Beyond the Polygons

Because it takes more than shiny graphics to make a work of art...

Persistent Storytelling

Examining the flaws inherent in telling a story in a Persistent World (MMO) setting

By Eric Miller

The Great Masquerade

Lady Prestor is the Black Dragon Onyxia! One of the most influential people in all of Stormwind, and possibly the Alliance, is truly nothing more than an enemy of all those without ebon scales, and she has no doubt been subverting Stormwind's strength ever since her arrival.

She teleports away moments after taking her revenge on the one who unmasked her, the man you saved from the prisons in Blackrock Mountain, the hero Reginald Windsor. While he lies dead, the nearest of the guards of Stormwind Castle suddenly transform into powerful dragonkin, and you leap into battle alongside the leader of Stormwind, the mighty Bolvar Fordragon.

After the battle is done, you are given a quest to avenge a hero's death, to find a way to open the door to Onyxia's lair, so that she can be slain and her evil ended for good. At the very least, however, you leave Stormwind Castle firm in the knowledge that Stormwind is safe now, that Onyxia will never again be able to influence events in the city again.

Only, when you return to Stormwind Castle, Lady Prestor still stands there, glaring at you as coldly as before. Fordragon doesn't seem to remember the true identity of the woman standing next to him. Should you return to the prisons of Blackrock Mountain, you will discover Marshall Windsor alive and somewhat well, stuck in the same prison cell that you had already rescued him from once before.

There's Something Wrong Here...

With the exception of World Events, all encounters must be able to occur multiple times, at least once for each player.

"The Great Masquerade” quest chain is possibly the best storytelling in Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, but it runs into a problem inherent in Persistent World storytelling: Persistence. With the exception of World Events, all encounters must be able to occur multiple times, at least once for each player. In the case of "The Great Masquerade”, this event must be done once by any player looking to join a raid group for Onyxia’s Lair, one of the first raid instances in World of Warcraft.

And thus, after a player goes through the event in Stormwind Castle, everything has to return to the status quo so that the next person can unmask Onyxia and watch Windsor die. Because all users are logged into the same game world, regardless of their level or position in a quest chain, all users have to be seeing the same things.

The problem runs deeper than just the resetting of some non-player characters (NPC’s) after a quest chain, of course. Unlike in other sorts of games with non-licensed Intellectual Properties, the developers cannot simply do whatever they like with the game world. In single-player games, cities are destroyed, kings are assassinated, nations are toppled and good men are recognized and promoted for their heroic deeds, but the ramifications of such acts cannot be displayed when the rest of the world must remain as it was.

Say Lady Prestor were removed from the World of Warcraft. Such an action would not tremendously affect gameplay, as "Onyxia’s Lair" ceased being a commonly used instance with the release of The Burning Crusade. She and the “Great Masquerade” quest chain could indeed be removed from World of Warcraft, except that she has more than just one role in World of Warcraft, such as her other quests.

Lady Prestor is involved in two other quest chains: One that explains why the King of Stormwind is a little boy, and another that introduces low-level Alliance players to the three towns often used by Alliance players when leveling. The former is integral to the plot of World of Warcraft, and wrapping up Onyxia's plot-line would necessitate the ending of the King's storyline as well. The second chain is integral to gameplay, letting players know where they can go after they’re done with the current zone. By removing Prestor, those other quest chains are in need of being addressed as well.

Band-Aid Time!

Blizzard has dealt with this in the past, though. During the introduction of Outland to World of Warcraft in its expansion pack, The Burning Crusade, several already existing NPC’s were moved from the planet of Azeroth to the world of Outland. They were replaced, person for person, in Azeroth by new NPC’s that took their place in the various quests that were associated with the displaced NPC’s. In some cases, substitution was done with a wink and a nod, such as with Hemit Nesingwary moving to the Outland zone of Nagrand and being replaced by Hemit Nesingwary Jr.

While this method is effective, it did not resolve any of the associated plot-lines, and in a few cases merely gave formerly named NPC’s with no quests actual quest chains to give out. Plot development by addition is one way of doing things, however after a while it begins to strain credibility somewhat.

Supremely powerful monsters currently threatening Azeroth and Outland: Onyxia, Nefarion, Ragnaros, Kel'Thuzad, Hakkar, Cthun, Zul'jin, Magtheridon, Kael'thas, Vashj, Gruul and Illaidin.

For example, currently threatening the land of Azeroth are the black dragons Onyxia and Nefarion, the Elemental Lord Ragnaros, one of the Lich King’s lieutenants Kel’Thuzad, the Troll god Hakkar, the Old God Cthun and the recently added former Troll warlord Zul'jin. Additionally, in Outland the Alliance and Horde are under attack by the Pit Lord Magtheridon, the Blood Elf prince Kael’thas, the Naga Queen Lady Vashj, the Gronn Gruul, and the Demon Hunter Illiadin. The existence of twelve extremely powerful threats against the player races would be beyond rather alarming in any case of fluid storytelling, easily reaching the level of incredulity. In World of Warcraft, it is unclear if all of them are still alive, as they have all been killed countless times by players but are still available to be assaulted.

One of the problems with the unchanging nature of the game world is that players become complacent about threats to the world. Players are aware of the nature of the game and that any NPC’s killed, while it might cause them to fail a quest, would still respawn in short order, and that any quest that said, “The town is in danger!”, has no actual affect on the game world if they are failed or ignored.

Many players are also aware that, even in the World Events, where things can indeed change dramatically, there is no threat to established cities and towns. Say that the Dwarven town of Kharanos was removed from the game, through some massive attack by evil Dwarves. While this could be an interesting story event, there might be some problems afterwards, such as what to do with the Dwarves and Gnomes.

Removing Kharanos (or: Why not to)

Kharanos is the second town that new Dwarven and Gnomish player characters (PC's) use as their home base. A great deal of quests and quest chains originate there, as well as skill trainers that players use to purchase new abilities and vendors used to turn loot into coin. Unlike higher level zones that players can use or skip at their leisure, each race is designated to a secondary zone and using another race's secondary zone is extremely rare.

The question Blizzard would quickly run into is, “Why remake something that’s already there when we can just add something new with the same amount of effort?”

That is not to say that removing Kharanos and not affecting gameplay significantly is impossible, but the difficulty of creating an entirely new place for Dwarves and Gnomes to level is extremely prohibitive when compared to the theoretical storyline effect. New class and profession players, vendors and quest givers would have to be created that amounted to about the same level of detail as in Kharanos, not to mention the large amount of added environments (buildings, forges, anvils, etc) that would be needed to make the new city a viable leveling area. The question Blizzard would quickly run into is, “Why remake something that’s already there when we can just add something new with the same amount of effort?”

It’s a valid point. Since Kharanos works quite well as is, there is no reason to remove such an integral part of the game for story reasons. After all, World of Warcraft is still a game, and gameplay concerns must come first. However, there are ways to do the deed without removing something essential to the game.

Redundant == Expendable

World of Warcraft is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG), and the word “Massive” certainly fits. With anything as large as Azeroth and Outland, there are bound to be a few zones that are redundant and unneeded. While the list was small in the original game, the addition of Burning Crusade created a number of areas that were no longer needed for character progression.

Storytelling through subtraction is best done through removing something that while nice and familiar to players, so that the loss would be meaningful, but is unnecessary in terms of the larger game experience. The three 55-60 intended zones, Eastern Plaguelands, Winterspring and Silithus, are mainly used to get to level 58 now and, as such, are not nearly as important as they used to be. But, even if you wanted to remove one of them, you couldn’t do so at every player’s whim. Adding and removing content both require things to happen all at once, through the mechanism of a World Event.

A World Event is an event in a Persistent World Game (PWG) that happens on the game world, for all players, a set number of times, usually once, at a specific time and location. While World of Warcraft has used these before, they have only been used to indicate that new content is available, such as during the Burning Crusade’s launch or the opening of Ahn’Qiral, or for seasonal events, such as Hallow’s Eve that occurs in the weeks around Halloween.

These World Events would be the best time to remove a redundant zone, preferably with grand spectacle and a sense of emotional turmoil from the players if at all possible. This is also something that could be used to remove some of the excessive numbers of threats to the worlds of Azeroth and Outland, and tie up a few of the dangling plotlines. There is also a possible psychological advantage to removing an extraneous zone during a World Event: If players are given a way to prevent it from being removed, no matter how sleight, then the mindset of “What’ll happen will happen no matter what I do, so let’s go grind for gear,” would be weakened in the face of any additional World Events, as well as introducing an interesting, definitive storyline.

After all, one of the biggest parts of any story is that things don’t stay the same forever, and in a world where things must stay the same so that everyone can experience the story, any permanent change is only for the best.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.