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What goes into the vertical slice of an MMORPG? I feel that it would be hard to prototype when a lot of the game's premise relies on quest progression, player-to-player interactivity, etc. It seems like something that cannot be communicated effectively until much later in development.
It's good to remember what a vertical slice is - it's a functioning version of all of the systems we plan on having in the game working together so that it is representative of the final game experience. MMORPGs tend to come with a lot of expected table stakes features, which means our vertical slice needs to have those features. For a MMORPG, that generally entails:
At least two distinct players on separate accounts able to log in and play in the same game world
A persistent game world - all players are able to log out and the same game state persists between logins
Functioning gameplay systems - skills, targeting, combat, leveling, crafting, etc.
MOBs that exist within the world independent of players
At least one quest that the players are able to accept, progress, complete, and obtain rewards
A functioning leveling system that allows players to level up and obtain rewards
Functional UI - combat, looting, character inventory, NPC interaction (e.g. quests, cinematic), chat, grouping with other players, etc.
A functioning chat system - player A can type a message and player B can read it in real time
A functioning item storage system (e.g. bank)
A functioning asynchronous mail system - player A can send a mail to player B who can receive it when they next log in.
A functioning player-to-player commerce system (auction house)
Functioning player-to-player direct trading
A functioning gear system
For a vertical slice to be a vertical slice, we don't need all of the different classes or races or gear or systems, but we need at least one of everything working together so that the play experience of the vertical slice is representative of the finished game play experience. Core functionality all has to be there. It can be a little unstable and it can be cobbled together, but everything should be there and it needs to feel like the intended final experience. The purpose of the vertical slice is to persuade the executives that the rest of the game is worth making.
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Keith Parkinson's oil painting for the cover of the original Everquest took 2 months to complete and drew from his experience creating D&D covers for TSR (Sony Online Entertainment, 1999). Parkinson continued to provide cover art for the EQ expansions until his untimely death in 2005 at age 47, after which his studio mate Larry Elmore illustrated the series in his similar style.
Guild Wars 2, as an MMO, was honestly an extreme game changer when it first came out.
Keep in mind, GW2 came out 11 years ago. While a lot of the things GW2 does now are commonplace among newer MMOs, GW2 was a trailblazer for a lot of it and still manages to hold an identity of its own. Prior to GW2, expecting a high quality MMO with no subscription fee was ludicrous. Sure, you had games like Maplestory or RuneScape, but while popular, they lacked the sort of polish you'd expect from a game like WoW.
11 years ago, most games with gathering basically had pvp gathering, where if you decided to harvest from the same node as someone else, you were effectively stealing resources from them. GW2 said fuck that and made each resource node individualized. This extended even further to other areas of play - someone helping you kill a monster doesn't result in less exp or loot for you, when doing an event everyone is able to get a gold completion as long as they reach a certain level of individual contribution, and even reviving people gave exp. This all contributed to a very friendly air about the game where in other games these actions were often adversarial, in GW2 these actions were all mutually beneficial.
When GW2 first came out, most MMOs had fairly simple combat. You often had to position yourself, but a hit was a hit. Being able to choose where you place your AoE was rare and most skills either required a target or purely existed to provide buffs. Skill shots were rare, and active dodging was unheard of. GW2 looked at combat and said "Okay but what if it was fun?". This was further enhanced by simply eschewing the traditional holy trinity of Tank, Healer, DPS in favor of Control, Support, Damage. There were clear analogs, but with no way of generating enmity and every possible build having some amount of self sustain, what would normally be a tank would focus more on disabling enemies and what would normally be a healer would focus more on general buffs. The GW2 trinity also allowed builds to dip into multiple aspects at once and most builds do a little of each even if they focus on one in particular. This made PvP more engaging as well! sPvP and WvW are both two massive areas of gameplay for GW2 and if it was combat standard for the time the game was released, both would have to function in massively different ways. GW2 remains my favorite game for PvP outside of FPS games.
Freely respeccing your characters was another thing GW2 brought to the table in a big way. FFXIV technically had it first, but given that ARR wouldn't launch until a year after GW2, I'd wager the two games had an equal amount of influence over newer MMOs adopting this sort of freedom in character building. WoW would not introduce free respeccing anywhere you want until 2016.
There is so much more GW2 can be cited for, from the way the world adapts to various events, to simply deciding that there wasn't going to be a gear treadmill and 80 is the max level forever, to the way it just gently guides you through leveling instead of sending you down endless amounts of quests.
Prior to GW2's release, whenever I talked about a new and upcoming MMO I was excited for, I would inevitably hear someone talk about how "Every upcoming MMO gets called the next WoW killer and none of them actually do it". I haven't heard that for about 10 years now.
I am not counting one-off mechanics like Nisi, Allagan Rot, Subtract, or Larboard/Starboard as fun as they are to meme about. I want to know which common one we might collectively dislike. :P
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