A Land of Loneliness...

by Tim Dale May 29th 2009 at 1:30PM

Filed under: Culture, Game mechanics, Opinion

So there I was, bouncing along on my way from one bit of crime-fighting to the next through the skyscrapers of Talos Island in City of Heroes and I noticed a small red dot on the corner of the zone map. I'd seen it before of course; a transfer point from one zone to the next, many times in fact, but had never actually taken the time to investigate further. I was always on my way to somewhere else, usually to stop some madman or another from destroying the world, but today I was determined to confront my ignorance, and bounced on through.

The other side was an entire zone I'd never seen before, despite more than nine months of play; Dark Astoria. Almost immediately I could see why I'd never heard of the place, in game or out. It is a Hazard Zone, designed and balanced to be appropriate content for groups of three to five Level 21 to 29 players, which is quite specific. No monorail travel links, no facilities apart from an obligatory Hospital, no contacts and no task forces. Practically no reason to be there at all, compared to anywhere else of that level and just to drive the point home, the entire zone labours under a very thick grey fog which reduces visibility down to about 80 yards; not helpful in a game with such extravagant travel powers. Atmospheric, but also extremely oppressive.

The backstory is that the place is a ghost town, which turns out to be true in more ways than one, and throughout my entire time there I was the only player in the zone. Here was one of those fascinating quirks of virtual geography that crop up in nearly every MMO; the abandoned places.

Very much a subtle quirk of player densities and unanticipated use of the geography provided by the game's designers, these desolate wildernesses are not necessarily an indication of game-wide decline and three zones over there might be hundreds of players, all going about their business. But for one reason or many this particular region of the world will end up seeing little or no visitors for days at a time.

One very simple reason is access; if a place is especially difficult or tedious to get to, for not much reward, few people will make the extra effort involved. The more remote locations of Star Wars: Galaxies, such as Rori, Talus and Lok showed very little player housing or any other evidence of civilisation, simply because they took a lot longer to get to than the areas near to the main travel hubs of Tatooine, Naboo and Corellia. Similarly, many of the more remote outposts in Guild Wars, like Maguuma Stade, Camp Hojanu or Eredon Terace see little or no passing traffic, simply by virtue of being well off the beaten track of each campaign's storyline progression.

Sometimes, despite being easy to reach, better alternatives are on offer, be it for progress, loot, companionship or prey. City of Heroes' Dark Astoria seems to fit this category, and just outside is the infinitely more amenable Talos Island, with hunting for levels 20 to 27, along with full facilities, travel connections, auction house and shops, around twenty mission contacts and far less troubles with basic visibility. In my MMO youth, I spent a great deal of time hunting in EverQuest's Swamp of No Hope, a Kunark zone aimed at Levels 1 to 25. A somewhat dismal place full of swampy water, rampant angry plant monsters and lots of visibility obscuring trees, and for the new Iksar, any one of three other zones would offer a far more attractive experience; Lake of Ill Omen, Field of Bone and Warsliks Woods, so the Swamp sank into a dismal state of appropriate neglect, which suited me fine, being on a free-for-all PvP server and wanting some place to hide. But the presence of more attractive alternatives near to hand meant the place rarely got a serious look. Modern day EverQuest, with its fifteen expansions is particularly prone to this effect, but is hardly alone.

Game mechanics and the channelling of players, inadvertent or otherwise, can have a large impact on the popularity and useage of the more remote zones of an MMO. Anarchy Online offered a surprisingly large world, Rubi-Ka, to play in, but also offered an innovative instanced mission system as well. This had the effect of providing on-demand bite-sized adventure through any number of mission doorways. A popular system, this did somewhat reduce the need for players to hunt outdoors in the old manner, and as a result while many zones saw a lot of travel to and from mission doorways, far less people actually stuck around to explore the more remote playfields. Distant places with exotic names like The Longest Road, Perpetual Wastelands and Broken Shores became mere mission destinations, if visited at all. City of Heroes, with its easy availability of mission doorways as an alternative to open world hunting and exploration can also suffer from this at times; more reason never to visit Dark Astoria and its like.

With a more mechanical approach to world design, the problem of abandoned places can be avoided. EverQuest II went with a very precisely drawn out geographical level progression, with each land being a more or less required play-through before tackling the next. Prior to the Echoes of Faydwer expansion, at any given level most players had two choices of zone that would be appropriate, leaving very little room for slack or unused zones. Ironically enough, Lord of the Rings Online's Lone Lands are often busy, and are also part of a similarly tightly structured level-progression via geography, and there is little slack in the regions appropriate to each level as the player advances.

As a game grows, with new lands being added and new options introduced in expansions and content patches, it seems a natural process for the older content to lose appeal and become less frequented. Remedial initiatives such as the recent addition of Zaishen Coins for rolling daily quests in Guild Wars, or simply flat-out revamps of abandoned zones can do much to breathe new life into these places, but perhaps there is no urgent need to reclaim these unintentional wildernesses in the name of efficiency.

I spent a good hour or so super-jumping about Dark Astoria, partly tracking down the Exploration Badges and History Plaques, but also just absorbing and enjoying the atmosphere, which was only half a thing of initial world design. The sheer emptiness of the zone was also an important part too. There is always time for the bustling action of travel hubs and group missions, but it is also nice to escape to the really wild places now and then, to enjoy a therapeutic bit of solitude even in an MMO, and this is something that would be hard to do if every land in the world was a bustling hive of activity.

Where do you go in your online worlds to unwind and seek tranquillity? Do you have a favourite wilderness that no one else seems to know about?

Tags: anarchy-online, city-of-heroes, everquest, everquest-ii, guild-wars, lord-of-the-rings-online, star-wars-galaxies, zones

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Brian! said on 1:49PM 5-29-2009

I dream of more sandbox type play in MMOs where unused zones offer rare or better "things". Back when I played UO I always wondered why they didn't put special crafting items and such in remote islands. Sometimes even just color would do, like iron that was white mined from the winter peaks vs. the iron that is mined from the red dessert. You want the color you want, you travel to the area and get it.

In that example, then Auction houses can be separate but connected. So if you put something up for auction in the south and someone buys in the north, it might take some extra minutes to deliver or even a slight fee for transporting the goods. Basically making it so that areas have items of commodity that are rare elsewhere.

Very light/simple example. Shame games that have months of time put into a single area to have them almost completely empty most of the time. Seems to reason there can be ways to make every zone interesting to visit over and over for various reasons...er, reward based reasons.

Lemmo said on 2:04PM 5-29-2009

Dark Astoria is also just generally hard to play in, with the really low visibility and monsters in large groups around every corner. It's generally only ventured into by task forces or giant monster hunters.

I think your assessment on 'dead zones' in MMOs is spot on. I think it's kinda fitting for Dark Astoria, at least.

PeterD said on 2:29PM 5-29-2009

I always liked Dark Astoria. Sure it's hard to play in and not 'optimal' for level grinding* but it sure is atmospheric and fun. I wish more zones in CoH had that level of atmoshpere.

* unless you do fire damage, in which case whoo-boy can you make tons of xp in DA fast

kmaurer289 said on 2:34PM 5-29-2009

In my 5+ years of CoH play, we usually spend at least a double handfull of missions that send us to Dark Astoria to chase down one or another vile villain that has chosen to hide their nefarious activities in this desolate haunted zone. It's also the home of the Banished Pantheon, so many mission arcs that deal with this villain group will involve defeat X missions here as well as the usual door missions.

Our play group often talks about the buildings that pop up out of the fog and ambush them. (Just their excuse for not watching where they were flying/jumping/teleporting/running, not actual ambushes by ambulatory buildings...)

There's a rich back story to the zone, which used to only be known if you did one of those arcs that dealt with the zone, and thus got handed the 'briefing' about it. Now there is a briefing person in there that will give you some of this information, so you don't miss out just because you didn't happen to get the contact that sent you there.

This, and other Hazard Zones in CoH are often the 'forgotten' or 'avoided' areas of the game. Others are Boomtown, Crey's Folly and Eden. The first and last of those you could, like with Dark Astoria, play your whole journey on CoH from level 1 to 50 without ever going to them.

Boomtown you often get sent to for that one Defeat X mission from the Boomtown Security Chief. Same with Eden, get sent to the Eden Security Chief and end up with a Defeat X inside Eden. But never have any reason to return there.

There ARE rare missions at higher levels that will send you off to some door in the depths of Boomtown, Dark Astoria, Crey's Folly and Eden... but not many.

And there's The Hive... a zone beyond Eden which, if you are not into doing 'raid content' you are likely NEVER to go to it... it's the home of Hamidon. (The villain side version of this is in The Abyss, off of Grandville... and The Abyss is, likewise, a zone a villain never need travel to.)

Personally, ever since the developers revamped The Hallows (once a zone no one WANTED to go to, but everyone got sent to at least once), and then revamped Faultline from a Hazard Zone into a FUN, FUN alterative low-mid level city zone with GREAT missions, I have wished for more content for the other underused Hazard Zones of Paragon City.

Thanks for reminding us all that Dark Astoria exists, and that City of Heroes is not alone in the world of MMOs in having under used and sometimes 'forgotten' areas.

Sean said on 11:06PM 5-29-2009

World of Warcraft has increasingly incorporated the sort of strict geographic progression you cite in Lord of the Rings Online and Everquest II. While quests in the "old world" often have you trekking out to the far corners of Azeroth, content in the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions guides the player along a breadcrumb trail tying towns and regions together.

I have unfortunately, like most, neglected these seldom traveled places in World of Warcraft. While I do have some motivation to explore, the effort involved in traveling to an area in an attempt to find some previously unexplored relic or cave is enough of a barrier to discourage me from starting. If I spend twenty or thirty minutes running accross the world only to find an unexciting geometry, albeit a new landscape, then I feel like I wasted time that I could have spent towards activities that have more tangible rewards in the game.

What excited me about Star Wars Galaxies in the run up to its release was the prospect of being able to create your own content in these unexplored areas, to find that unexciting bit of Tatooine far from other civilization and start one of your own. I never got into SWG after release, and sadly that original vision did not last long, but I hope some day soon a developer realizes the marriage between a wide open world to explore and tools for players to shape and add to it.

Caxxus said on 2:35AM 5-30-2009

Yuck, I hate DA... As for empty places I like to go? Well while playing City of Heroes I like to go to some ghost towns too! Like Firebase Zulu, The Chantry, Cascade Archipelago and you can't forget The Storm Palace, you know... what was supposed to be our end-game content... but well... really isn't because it all sucks horribly... well the zones are cool for the first 10 minutes, but then you get lost... and you can't find your way to the next place... and... yeah... nobody is ever there... because the only missions there are are either: "Kill 50 Rularuu in Section Blank" or "Go defeat all rularuu in this cave to save all the hostages!" *pukes*

I'm done ranting.