Improving the Tome of Knowledge

Warhammer Online’s Tome of Knowledge is a great start for future MMOs to build upon, it really is.  However, in the development of a new MMO that would include such a feature, I would also have to take a look at what Lord of  the Rings Online did with their Trait System and also factor in WoW’s Achievement System as well.

And there is one rule in the development of such a system:  A Celebration of the Player.  That’s what any Tome should be, it should celebrate what a player has accomplished while playing your game.  It should reward the player for playing the game, and more importantly it should never feel like a grind.

One part of WARs Tome that I do not personally care for is the “Kill 100,000 of X”.  Really?  A hundred thousand?  Again… really?  I barely want to press on to kill a THOUSAND of something, much less killing a hundred thousand, or worse, a million.  Both numbers are simply astronomical in terms of what casual players want to do in your game.

So without further a-do, here are five things that I would include in a tome-system that I would develop:

1. The Tome should be Account Based – This isn’t to say all unlocks should be account-based, but the actual tome itself should be.  If you have spent 2 years on different characters playing the game, why isn’t everything you’ve done counted as an achievement by the player?  The player has done these things.  THE PLAYER.  The Player wants to feel like they have accomplished a lot in your game.  If the player is someone who is constantly hopping between 4 or 5 alternate characters, than they may feel like they aren’t truly accomplishing much.
2. Progress Bars are a Requirement – Lord of the Rings Online gets this right.  Warhammer Online does not.  If you are working towards and achievement to say, “Dance Naked on a Mailbox 500 times” (Night Elf being the prerequisite of course), there should be a bar that ticks upwards each time you do this.  Guess-work isn’t fun.  No one wants to do things and not see that they worked TOWARDS a goal.  We all like to see that we have done something with our playtime.
3. Rewards should be worthwhile!  While titles and accessory items are cool and most times worthwhile, it should not be all that a player can achieve in the tome.  One aspect I truly enjoyed in LOTRO is the system where when you use an ability a certain number of times you get a trait you can slot to add other effects to the ability.  Why isn’t this done more often?  It makes SO MUCH SENSE.  If a wizard casts Fireball 500 times, don’t you think they will have uncovered some secrets behind casting the spell to make their fireball a bit better than a Wizard who has only casted 120 Fireballs?  Or are we going to flat out say that a Fireball is a Fireball is a Fireball? 
4. The Tome needs to celebrate player achievements more – It should be something that truly tells the story of what you have accomplished in game.  Did you level up on 4-10-2011?  There should be a notation of where you were when you leveled and what you killed (or what quest you completed) to level up.  Does this turn it into a scrapbook?  Sure, I guess one can say that, but again it’s about THE PLAYER.
5. Player’s Accomplishments need to be accessible! – The Bragging system in WAR is a great start.  This lets players see what people have done (only if they’ve set brags though!) in the Tome.  From here, what I would say something people can look into doing is adding the Tome to the Web.  Or allow players to print a snapshot of what they’ve done to post on the interwebs in some fashion.  People like showing off, it’s just the nature of the beast, so why not give them the opportunity to do so with as little effort as possible on their end?

These are five places where I would start.  And I may go into some detail later on, but I wanted to lay down what I thought would be a solid foundation for future posts.  Let me go ahead and finish this posting by saying:

Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992 ran of a slogan:  “It’s the Economy, Stupid!”  I’d like to think that from here on out the focus of game design should be:  “It’s About the Player’s Experience, Silly!”  Players WANT to enjoy an MMORPG.  They want to have fun and they want to feel like the designers had them in mind when crafting a game.  I think a journal or tome system accomplishes that very well.

The question then is- How do we celebrate the players experiences in our game in the best way possible?

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