First of all, excuse my inactivity over the past few days; I'm in the middle of my exams and I have essays to deliver, so I haven't been as active around the blogosphere as I would have liked, especially since very interesting discussions sparked. One which caught my attention was the opinion of a few bloggers expressing their concern on soullessness of some games. Implicitly stands the idea that, in ye olde days, MMOs used to be pregnant with brushes of something not entirely definite, which made them more life-like, or world-like if you wish. These might be related to the concept of Easter eggs, but not entirely. What exactly is the "soul" of a game, and where is it located, if games have one? In the lore tidbits scattered around the world? Inside the Maelstrom (when it was not a game location but a symbol)? Correct, and for the following reason:
The soul of a game lies where its players cannot reach, it lies beyond what is the "game" and into what becomes the simulation of a world.
MMOs are more prone to be deemed soulless than other games because of the expectation that MMOs need to fulfill in order to be deemed worthy of their title - MMOs need to render a world for the players to inhabit, whereas your average RPG needs only to deliver an experience (which is why a cinematic experience such as the Mass Effect series is considered a good game, while SW:TOR attempt at the same thing detracts it from constituting a world). The Elder Scrolls titles are also required to deliver a world, since their main appeal is that same sense of bigger-than-you space which an MMO ought to convey in order to attract us. That which we can easily master, like the storyline in most RPGs, will not haunt us afterwards with promises of more secrets to unveil, with the infinite possibilities of a world to grasp.
In order to create a life-like world, developers have to stuff it with elements unrelated to the game itself. Take for instance the signature books of The Elder Scrolls series: they do not hold a direct relation to the game but to the world, not being part of any quest, although clarifying certain game events in the light of the world's history. They confer TES a background which adds another layer of meaning to the players' own experiences, but also convey the idea of a world which is independent of the individual player's input.
But the soul of a game must not be contained exclusively in the books, or other lore sources one may come across. It can also be imprinted in the locations and NPCs, when those exist in its own sake and not to deliver a game-experience (such as a quest). In Morrowind, the player would come across many dwarven (Dwemer) contraptions and artifacts, ruins and chambers, which were there to convey the idea of a sudden vanish of an entire race, which undoubtedly would produce awe in the player's mind, since the Dwemer were out of her reach inside the game. No quest to bring them back, not even a goal for most of those ruins scattered across Morrowind; their purpose was to produce a world. They were the soul of the game.
The soul of the game lies in the sense of a world produced by events, locations, characters, objects which are not made for the purpose of providing content for the player. They must be independent of the game activities (such as questing, raiding, etc). They could even be part of a quest, provided that it is a) full of non-game content such as lore; b) not immediately accessible to everybody, like class quests, or quests belonging to a chain. They could also be locations: the soul of Karazhan was Medivh's chambers, accessed through the staircase to Prince Malchezaar. It makes sense that there would be a room where the proprietor of the tower lived, doesn't it? Yet that is missing from many game locations these days, even in TBC WoW (Karazhan was actually developed during vanilla). The soul of Skyrim was those locations in the game world which told a story on its own, without being linked to major player-controlled events (an abandoned mage tower, a cellar infested by demons, each and every NPC which had a unique dialogue but no quest to account for it).
The idea for this post originated from an Easter egg I found in old Dire Maul in this private TBC server. I had gone there with a guildmate for the sake of exploring that old and lore-sated instance which was one of my favourites. We searched for the library and for the Highborn prince (whose background always fascinated me), and came across a named skeleton on the floor of the library: "Skeletal Remains of Kariel Winthalus" Who was this man? Apparently, he was the author of some of the librams which you may turn in for the head enchants, and in his librams you may learn that he supported Kael'thas and Illidan, and sought knowledge from the Highborne in Dire Maul to aid their cause. Not only that, the character is also a reference to a legendary individual who came to be a WoW developer.
World of Warcraft is (was?) full of references like that. That constituted its soul. It is not merely the impression of a newbie MMO player from their first game, although that might have an impact for sure.
A game with a soul remains bigger than any one player, since it is not completely devoted to tell her story, but that of the world itself. I am concerned that the upcoming games might be forgetting about that world aspect and place too much importance in the game, gamifying the entirety of a world which ought to stand on its own. Azeroth achieved this, becoming bigger than the game -WoW- itself. I wonder if Telara will accomplish this as well. It requires a development team who will cherish their game enough to care about bringing life to it, not only new and shiny features. This might clash with the F2P business model, though. We shall see. I am eager to explore a new world which does not respond to me personally, but to my expectations of a place to inhabit.
