Massively^™

In most MMOs, we're used to our time investment leading to a character that is overwhelmingly powerful, compared to a player that is fresh out of the gates. For example, a level 30 is going to thrash a level 10 in World of Warcraft or Warhammer Online, barring gross incompetence from the higher level. However, The Agency's developers are making sure that a ranked-up character isn't guaranteed to beat down a rookie in PvP combat, as SOE Seattle game designer and writer Matt Staroscik detailed in a recent interview.

This doesn't mean that there's no point to leveling up a toon -- Staroscik reminded us that players will gain new skills and weapon techniques as they play, and the ability to equip different gear. These perks will make an experienced player a tad more deadly, but a newcomer that takes quickly to the shooter gameplay should be able to hold their own. It sounds quite similar to Call of Duty 4's multiplayer advancement.

Staroscik also mentioned the "alias" outfits that we've heard about in the past. The system sounds like it could provide a nice change from being a heavily-armed bad-ass, provided that there's some variety to the missions that come up.

Clockwork Gamer posted an interesting look at skill in MMOs the other day. He categorizes skill in online games into three areas: character gear and advancement, game knowledge, and player skill.

Character gear and advancement can be done by anyone-- the longer you've played a game, it's almost guaranteed that the better your character will be. Game knowledge is usually something cultivated both outside the game, and by social interaction inside the game. It's only by reading sites like this one and talking to your friends that you can learn strategies to defeat enemies (or other player classes). And player skill is the hardest form of skill to get a grasp on. It's that weird measure of how good you are at aiming the mouse and hitting the right buttons when necessary.

Usually, when people say "playing skill," they're talking about games that require twitch and computer knowledge to conquer: first person shooters, real-time strategy games, and so on. MMOs don't usually fit into that because in most cases, the other two forms of skill can match up or even outweigh actual "skill"-- a level 1 character will never topple an endgame character, no matter how great his aim is. But there's a lot more research to do here-- it seems like there is definitely a sweet spot for player skill to be found in MMOs. While some have tried (and are trying) to find it, we haven't quite hit it yet.

KillTenRats has a good commentary up on lore and its role in MMO games. Story in videogames is a tough thing to get right, and it's even tougher in a world where you don't just have one hero-- you have hundreds or thousands of them. (Sidenote: while it's not an MMO, Portal-- my vote for Game of the Year this year-- deals excellently with story, and you should read this long but insightful debate between N'Gai Croal and Stephen Totilo about it). How do you describe a changing narrative in a place where the world itself is designed to be persistent?

The common answer is world events, but those are still so complicated that even their little brothers, instanced events, are still in the stages of infancy. We may be able to clear out a castle in an instance, but can we destroy one? And the very fact that it's instanced means that we can leave, walk back inside the door, and nothing has changed. We chalk it all up to coding right now that the prisoner we just rescued a few minutes ago still remains in his cell, and we simply sigh, resigned to the fact that we're not really changing the world, just leaving it reset for the next group of players.

Still, there have to be some ideas floating around that could work to bring around a great story in a persistent world.