World of Warcraft was my first MMO, while certainly not my first “virtual world” (assuming that one counts text-based spaces such as LambdaMOO). Lately, I’ve been feeling rather tired of World of Warcraft — though researching the game is fascinating to me, and a big chunk of my dissertation work, I’m yearning for something different to play. Age of Conan and Warhammer Online seem like retreads of the same MMO mechanics, and that’s spurred me on to think a little more about what I personally want and do not want out of an online, virtual world game.

The ever-insightful Timothy Burke had an interesting post on TerraNova on the “state of the Diku” several months ago. Summarizing the overwhelming prevalance of the old DikuMUD mechanics in current MMOs, Burke stated:

It is well understood that the game structures and mechanics that undergird most commercial virtual worlds today draw their underlying DNA from Diku-style text-based MUDs, though many contemporary players have only experienced the latest iterations or forms of those game mechanics. Many of these features are now so familiar and expected, so much a part of the grammar of play activity, that developers seem to implement them without asking what purpose or role they will serve in a particular gameworld. Moreover, precisely because these features have become so foundational, it seems difficult to think of new approaches or game mechanics, even those that offer only a mild twist. But even a single such innovation can do a lot to spark new interest among players.

I’m frankly not terribly interested in the new kinds of lipstick put on the old pig that is the “kill a bunch of monsters, pick up X number of items, get better gear, lather, rinse, repeat” that is the mainstay of this genre of game. This is occasionally a fun, often very comfortable (though sometimes very boring) means of progressing one’s character in these sorts of games. However, new game mechanics and radically different conceptions of what it means to be in a virtual space are increasingly interesting to me.

About a year ago, I gave Uru Live a shot — the game is, essentially, an MMO though of a decidedly non-Diku variety (no leveling, no combat, no “drops,” etc.), set within the world of Myst. I’m old enough to remember when Myst was a surprisingly innovative (at least in visual imagery, if not in core mechanics) game, and I was curious to see how a Myst world would even work with multiple players. At the time, Uru Live was on its second lease on life — it had originally been cancelled during beta, then revived by GameTap. GameTap kept it alive during this next “season” of story (more on that in a bit), and then it was unfortunately cancelled again.

One of the striking things about Uru Live was how to transfer a puzzle game into a 3-D MMO space. One begins the game “instanced” within what is, essentially, the original single-player version of the game. After a bit, you end up getting an object which opens up the social components of the game — chatting, friends lists, taking snapshots within the game, etc.

I didn’t get much further than this, but did find the idea appealing that there were multi-person puzzles (including levels designed by players, I think?) within the world, and that the game designers both roleplayed within the space, and took developments within the player world to craft the next “episodes” of the game. (Not to mention the rich and interesting online communities that arose around the game!) Played out over a “season” (or set of “episodes,” a linked chain of rollouts of new narrative), it appears that the game designers wanted there to be a role for both player developed narrative and the overarching storyline determined by the designers of the game. Imagine how likely somethig like this would ever happen within something like World of Warcraft — first of all, does anyone truly play a Diku-based game for the narrative, anyway?

I’m excited by the news that Uru Live is coming back yet again, as I don’t think I ever got far enough into the game to fully understand how it worked. It’s certainly a bit of an insular, “boutique” MMO, but perhaps that’s exactly what I need right now — though it’s inescapable that the huge, mass-marketed games (like World of Warcraft) make enormous impact in the gaming world, these smaller games are where unique (and vibrant) online cultures can evolve.

In other non-Diku MMO news, the new Animal Crossing game drops on November 16th, and Parallel Kingdom (an iPhone-based MMO mixed with an augmented reality game) is out on Halloween. I’ll give these a shot in the interim.