![]() There were other upsides to keeping players on foot. The virtual world felt scarier, more strategic, more intimate and at the same time, larger, more awe-inspiring. If they died, they’d better have budgeted ample time to retrace their steps. In more challenging MMORPGs like 2002’s Final Fantasy XI, players were forced to traverse deadly zones on foot, which meant resource-managing stealth potions and artfully dodging monsters’ leering eyes. ![]() From close up, players could appreciate the variety of textures and colors designers put in the game. Mountains and architecture forced circuitous routes through valleys and around towers. Mired to the ground, players might spend 20 or 30 minutes at a time trudging across a continent to their destination (less if they had a mount like a horse or a giant wolf). It made sense to have distance.” The time it took to bring a questgiver their thingie was a feature-at least for developers-and not a bug. I shouldn’t say ‘trick.’ But everything was created in a way that forced players to keep playing over and over again. Instead, Emmert says, “Every trick was pulled. These games relied on subscriptions to make money, but developers couldn’t release an entire new world every month to keep players engaged. “Early MMOs didn’t have a ton of content,” says Jack Emmert, CEO of Dimensional Ink Games, makers of DC Universe Online. But like Pandora’s Box of game mechanics, flying is here to stay.ĭistance was a defining feature of the first major MMORPGs by design. Some developers have even implied that, if they could, they would withdraw flying entirely from their games. ![]() For years, dedicated players have grumped that flying makes online games less social, too easy, even mercenary. One of humanity’s greatest wishes, it turns out, has sparked major controversy in the world of video games. When game developers introduced flying to online superhero game City of Heroes and World of Warcraft in the mid-aughts, it changed the MMORPG genre forever-both for better and for worse. In the decade-plus since flying first came to massively multiplayer online role-playing games, digital airspace has become as populated as the ground, maybe even more so. In World of Warcraft, orcs glide along in giant metal rockets and humans steer horse-sized birds across miles of desert. The sky in Final Fantasy XIV is full of catgirls on broomsticks and elves on dragonback. ![]()
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