Mask of Eternity: The MMO

[Valiento]

So it turns out one of Roberta's original ideas for KQ:MOE, was that it was going to be a multiplayer game, possibly even massively-multiplayer. Here are a few of her quotes on the subject;

"Mark and I entertained the idea of making it multiplayer also, but that was nixed. It was like, well were doing 3-d, and that's enough, you know, for now. Maybe Multiplayer later."

"When I started development on King's Quest Mask of Eternity, we also decided, we were thinking at the time to make it multiplayer, and also 3-d, but we dropped the multiplayer aspect of it. It was just too much to try to develop, and also develop 3-d."

What would people thought of KQ8 if it had turned out to be a multiplayer game?

Is this something people are glad Roberta was forced to change or not?

[Simo Sakari Aaltonen]

I think it is for the best that this idea was abandoned. I have never felt compelled to try multiplayer online games and doubt they could give the kind of experience I seek in adventure games.

They are their own thing and no doubt I am the one losing out in not playing them. I just think KQ is not the right vehicle for that format. At least as far as my own interest goes.

[Valiento]

I'm not sure anyone has created a true adventure game MMO experience. Sarien.net not excluding; theirs is more of a chat room stuck on top of the old games, so you can't actually solve puzzles together.

I'm not sure how early this 'original idea' was, but if it was before the idea for combat to be added to the game, I don't know how they would have been able to make puzzles that multiple players had to solve together.

If it was an 'original idea' added after Mark suggested combat, it would have pushed more towards a more Diablo-style action-rpg MMORPG. Which I think would have taken it even further from Adventure games (and separate it from the puzzles further).

I recall in some of of Roberta's interviews she even was thinking of possibly making KQ9 the multiplayer game, that KQ8 would have been! It would have been the main focus of her 'innovation' to Adventure gaming, made by that game.

[DAISHI]

What about Myst: Uru Online?

[Olaus Petrus]

Originally Posted by Simo Sakari Aaltonen

I think it is for the best that this idea was abandoned. I have never felt compelled to try multiplayer online games and doubt they could give the kind of experience I seek in adventure games.

They are their own thing and no doubt I am the one losing out in not playing them. I just think KQ is not the right vehicle for that format. At least as far as my own interest goes.

I can imagine the horrible scenario where I would burst into rage and hit my computer with an axe, because it would be very annoying experience trying to roleplay as a knight of Daventry when every character I would meet during my adventures in Daventry would answer with f-words and teen slang.

[Valiento]

What about Myst: Uru Online?

I remember hearing about that, how did it work? Was it one of those basically "chat rooms", where people could try to discuss ways to solving the puzzles together? I think one of the earlier Myst games (or clones) I played, had something like that (but its been years).

It was a bit like having someone looking over your shoulder and backseat driving...

[Simo Sakari Aaltonen]

I have played some RPGs and taken part in a few LARPs, but my true interest was always in adventure game-like storytelling. I can see how it might have seemed at the time that, logically, the way to take adventure games forward would be to make them more like real life, which meant having it be a shared experience.

But I think this was the logical misstep, because few people (and I am not one of them) are capable of improvising nothing but quality material in real time! To say nothing of collectively maintaining a cohesive atmosphere and spontaneously interacting in such a way as to carry the story forward...

[Valiento]

I agree with you, I think it would have been a mess.

It's hard enough getting people to interact correctly in the MMORPG's when battling major bosses... Trying to do something like that for puzzles would be crazy...

Reminds me of those "how many ____ does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" jokes.

[joek86]

Sierra was trying to make all their games MMO. Look up Leisure Suit Larry 4, they wanted to make that online, but weren't able to, so the game was scrapped. Al Lowe, the creator of the series, didn't want to invalidate all the work that had been put in on LSL4 so he called the game that was released LSL5.

[Armakuni]

Wasn't Space Quest 7 supposed to be a multiplayer game as well?

Not that I have any clue what these games would have played like has they been made like that, but I'm feeling pretty certain it's *not* something I would like!

Actually, in the case of MoE, I guess it wouldn't have bothered me much as I dislike the existing MoE so much anyway.
The problem would be if a game like that had become a huge success and in turn affected future adventure games... that I would have found quite disastrous, I think.

[Scnew]

Has there been ANY sort of co-op puzzle game? The only one I can think of is the upcoming Portal 2. Which I am going to play the crap out of.

[Armakuni]

Uru comes to mind, used to play that a bit on... was it Gametap? Or something... some kind of online service like that, anyway.

[DAISHI]

Originally Posted by DAISHI

What about Myst: Uru Online?

Also. It's now open source development.

[Armakuni]

Interesting, I'll have to google that... I've always rather liked Uru, it seems to have gotten a somewhat bad rep with a bunch of people due to how different it is from the Myst series.
Had quite a bit of fun playing it online, even though that didn't last for very long... but even the single player stuff is rather good, I think.

Even despite not generally liking 3D graphics in adventure games very much, I have to admit that this game does have some pretty nice looking areas... and it's one of the few cases where it seemed absolutely necessary, what with it being designed as a multiplayer online game.
One area I still remember quite clearly is reaching the top of some very large structure, where you could look over the edge and get a nice view of the surrounding trees and such (the graphics making up the view itself weren't that spectacular, but ending up outside on top of that thing was still pretty cool, from what I recall).

Too bad things went as they did, this is maybe the one case I've witnessed where an online multiplayer puzzle/adventure game could have worked, at least well enough to be enjoyable.

Which is a rather impressive accomplishment when you think about it.

[Olaus Petrus]

Originally Posted by Armakuni

Wasn't Space Quest 7 supposed to be a multiplayer game as well?

Not that I have any clue what these games would have played like has they been made like that, but I'm feeling pretty certain it's *not* something I would like!

I can't imagine that it would be something I would like either, in fact I can imagine that it would be even more annoying than when you're trying to play solitaire and someone comes and says: "Move this card here and then you can move that card there."

I enjoy playing adventure games because I can follow the story and solve the puzzles at my own pace. It would be very annoying that someone else would have solved all the puzzles while I was still exploring all the possible hotspots and dialogue options to see if those give any funny comment.

Also I don't see how team play could work well in a story driven adventure game where for example Player 1 is Sam and Player 2 is Max. It would require that both players play exactly at the same time and if I wanted to play I had to wait that my friend also has spare time. Other alternative is that everyone is at the same server and during my game session I might encounter several versions of the same characters which are all solving different parts of the story. IMHO that would ruin the atmosphere completely.

[Sarendor]

I actually think that an massively multiplayer adventure game could be quite cool. In such a game, role playing would probably be much more common, as the game will be more realistic, (after all, even in a completely crazy game, you will usually not kill hundreds of monsters a day,) and more players will play it for the story. Such a game should have about as much puzzles which can be completed as puzzles which require co operation. And in such a game, if there are classes, each will be able to solve the puzzles in different ways, like in Quest for Glory.
But I am probably hoping for too much.

[Valiento]

It might have been interesting, or it might have ended up as limited in puzzles as most massive MMO games tend to be.

[DAISHI]

Originally Posted by Valiento

It might have been interesting, or it might have ended up as limited in puzzles as most massive MMO games tend to be.

Not if there's no real combat to be done. It forces the puzzles to become the emphasis.