Bioware Austin's lead combat designer Damion Schubert gave a little perspective on what he considered important in massively multiplayer gameplay design at the Austin Game Developer Conference 2008, reported by IGN.

The details are as below:

While the studio's current project was not discussed, Schubert did move through examples, good and bad, of a range of MMOs from World of Warcraft, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Shadowbane, EVE Online, and World War II online, amongst others. Schubert is the lead combat designer at Bioware Austin, and has in the past worked on Meridian 59 and Shadowbane.

Much of Schubert's talk focused on elder gameplay, or endgame content. He stressed that the endgame content is vital to any MMO, serving as the dedicated player base's reward for moving through the level curve. There are a lot of interesting things happening at the higher end of most MMOs, but unfortunately it's very difficult for players to see them. "There is a lot of really cool stuff going on at the upper end of all of these games," said Schubert. "Unfortunately, not a lot of people have the time, energy and resources to play more than one of these at a time." So what then should developers do to get people to stick with their particular product?

The endgame, elder content is also the most challenging piece of an MMO, says Schubert, especially compared to the leveling process, which he compared to popping bubble wrap. Because of the open nature of MMOs, it's possible to explore the world and discover where the best spots to level are, removing even more challenge from the process. With the endgame, however, people are more restricted, and the difficulty level, either in PvP contests or PvE raid encounters, shoots up dramatically.

A lot of adhering to these rules has to do with balancing combat between the classes, but there's also the issue of ensuring that a team that repeatedly wins PvP contest doesn't become overly powerful. Either the losers need to be given some kind of advantage in a way, or the playing field needs to be reset to zero and have everyone start over again. If you reward the winners too much, they'll gain far too strong a foothold in the community and push out all other competition, lessening the appeal for incoming players.

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Resource: IGN

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