The head of the MMORPG The Elder Scrolls Online, Matt Firor, talks about the open world and how it has changed over time. He believes that no one would play the highly revered The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind today; the game from 2002 is completely outdated. Although it is his favorite game, today’s players lack the patience for such an open world.
Who is Matt Firor? Matt Firor is one of the most important MMORPG developers of all time:
- He began his career in the late 80s with “MUDs,” the precursors of MMORPGs.
- From 1995 to 2006, he worked at MMORPG developer Mythic and was a key player in the development of Dark Age of Camelot, a legendary MMORPG to this day.
- Since 2007, he has been working at Zenimax, the parent company of Bethesda, on The Elder Scrolls Online, which incorporates central elements from DAOC, but is heavily influenced by Skyrim. He has been the lead here for 17 years.
Open worlds used to be a mystical adventure space; today they are annoying
This is now his topic: The online magazine Rock, Paper, Shotgun published an article on how the open world has changed over the years. The thesis of the article is:
- In the past, open worlds were mystical realms where anything could happen.
- Today, an open world consists of a series of tedious mandatory tasks around which everything is designed: It feels like you’re treading water.
- This is the criticism of an open world that follows the so-called Ubisoft formula: The world is filled with repetitive collection tasks in the same patterns.
Firor believes: Players no longer want the chaotic open world
This is what Firor says: Firor believes that the change in the open world is due to players who no longer have the patience to feel lost in an open world.
He cites the open world of Morrowind as an example of what developers like Bethesda can no longer do. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was released in 2002 and was considered a milestone in the genre:
When you play it now – there’s no compass, no map, the quests literally say ‘Go to the third tree on the right and walk 50 steps west.’
And if you did that now, no one would play it. Only very few people would play it. Now you have to give them clues and hints, and no one really wants to take that much time to solve problems. They want the story to be told or to interact with another player or an NPC.
Players are not as tough as they used to be
In explaining this, Firor states: Morrowind is a great game, one of his favorites, but the way Morrowind tells the story through its open world is no longer contemporary.
Today, players are not as tough as they used to be, when only hardcore gaming fans owned a PC or the first generation of consoles and wanted to spend as much time in a game as possible.
Today, players have so many options on how to spend their time that as a game designer, you must ensure that games attract, engage, and entertain your players:
Running around a field and trying to measure 50 steps from a tree is no longer part of that. Which is somewhat sad because I am from the old school.
You also have to support and address these hardcore players today, but you must also keep a large audience in mind that only has 20 minutes to spend in a game.
A game designer today must address both groups as their target audience.
MMORPG players know what Firor describes
This is what lies behind it: MMORPG players are also familiar with this development. Today it’s evident in how quest NPCs in MMORPGs have large question marks over their heads and are marked on the mini-map. Additionally, they conveniently stand in quest hubs, as close together as possible.
Quests typically proceed in such a way that you can clearly see and know where you need to go, and even the mobs are marked on the map.
If a quest does not have such positional indicators but only describes in text what the player must do, you can be sure that this very quest is a much sought-after topic in MMORPG discussions and is covered by gaming sites and YouTube channels with precise “How to complete the secret quest” guides.
One of Matt Firor’s companions from DAOC and Mythic was Mark Jacobs back in the 2000s. Unlike Firor, who moved to a large company after his time at Mythic and seems satisfied there, Jacobs broke with the gaming industry after a bad stint at EA and is trying to do his own thing: Legendary developer says: His new MMORPG was on the verge of collapse, and now it has a release date.
