Last week, Rerollz had the fortunate opportunity to ask famed author, R.A. Salvatore a few questions about his experiences and thoughts on the MMORPG genre. In case you didn’t know, R.A. Salvatore is the author of the Drizzt series of books (among many others) and is now currently working creatively with Curt Schilling and Todd McFarlane at 38 Studios on an MMOG project code named Copernicus.

Remember, R.A. Salvatore’s answers do not reflect the ideas or design directions of 38 Studios, but they reflect his own thoughts and experiences while playing these games for the last decade or so.

So if you want to know about his thoughts on Warcraft’s WOTLK, the revenge of Wizard Salvatore and his thoughts on story telling then read the whole interview after the break. Follow the link below.

Rerollz: The one common thread throughout all MMOG’s is the desire to tell a story in a fictional world. Whether is through paragraphs of text in a dialogue box that you found because of a yellow exclamation mark, or because you decided to hail an interesting looking NPC or because you defeated a boss and brought on a cutscene; many games have tried and there has been a moderate amount of success and failure. Since telling stories is your expertise, what MMOG has brought you the best story and what in particular made it work so well?

R.A. Salvatore: Take this all with a grain of salt, because my exposure to MMO’s is limited to just a few games – when I play, I get so into it, I have blinders on for many other things. I’ve played a few intensely and over long periods, and been exposed to a few others. In the former category: EQ, EQ II, Acheron’s Call II, Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot. In the latter: Acheron’s Call, Warhammer, DDO, Age of Conan and Lord of the Rings Online. Just to get that out of the way.

More than telling a story, I look for an MMO to give me a world that makes sense, remains consistent, and allows me to suspend disbelief easily. In other words, a world that, when I’m playing, feels like I’m really there. Only now are MMO’s getting more into story-telling – I think that the Icecrown zone in WoW’s Wrath of the Lich King expansion is the best example of storytelling I’ve seen to date. The zone changes around you as go through some fairly emotionally intensive questing. Very well done. Because of the new technology, Blizzard was able to do some pretty revolutionary stuff in that expansion.

That said, however, the best example of a living, breathing world I’ve seen to date is the original Everquest. When you left a dungeon in EQ, you felt like the dungeon was continuing behind you. That world also had so many NPCs with character. I still think about Kizdian Gix, for example. The developers took the world seriously and the consistency showed. I remember when Velious released…I could hardly believe the way I felt like I was actually exploring a new land. Brilliant, brilliant stuff. I wish I could go back and play, but the mechanics and the UI options felt so clunky to me now…

Rerollz: What do you think is the most successful medium for delivering a storyline inside a MMOG? Is it text in a Quest Log window? Is it dialogue bubbles popping up from NPC’s on screen? Or is it perhaps voiceover work like with what they are doing at Bioware’s Star Wars game?

R.A. Salvatore: It’s definitely not the text bubbles. Of that I am certain. How many people read the text of a quest carefully, compared to those who just read the objectives to get it done? I think it’s a combination of a lot of things: some text, sure; voiceover helps, but even that can get tedious if it drones on too long (the opening of Culling of Stratholme…); cut scenes can do phenomenal things to evoke emotion in the player, if they’re done well; and finally, as I said above regarding Icecrown, the idea that your actions actually change the environment is probably the most powerful thing of all.

Rerollz: There is a large polarization when it comes to a player base in any mass-market MMOG. You have the crowd that “enjoys the ride” when It comes to the leveling process and you have the crowd that races to the top. Which crowd are you in? What type of content do you enjoy the most; the leveling content or the max level content (or option c: “Levels? Who needs levels!”)?

R.A. Salvatore: Count me in the “enjoys the ride” crowd, fully. I’ve done top-end raiding and so many times, it becomes simply a matter of mechanics – “Stand here. Push these two buttons.” There’s more than that, of course, but the whole exercise becomes a puzzle to get the “get,” as in, those one or two pieces of “upgrades.” For me, opening a new zone, bit by bit (if it’s a good one) is the exciting part, and when a game becomes nothing more than a mechanics/puzzle exercise (read the boards before every encounter) and all improvisation is lost, then I get bored.

Rerollz: MMORPG content is often labeled by the amount of people it takes to finish. What is your preferred style of play? Do you enjoy bringing twenty four of your closest friends with you to defeat a dragon or would you prefer bringing three or four stalwart companions to defeat a menacing wizard? World of Warcraft is driving the number of people needed to view the main story line to smaller and smaller portions. Do you think this is a good trend?

R.A. Salvatore: I’m all for smaller and smaller potions/groups, although the large group “event” should have its place as well. One of the things that irked me about EQ was the notion that you needed 40 of your best friends to get your “epic.” I was playing a monk, and isn’t the whole point, the idea of being able to achieve something personally? I mean, showing off the item you got which took you, personally, hours of discipline and cleverness is one thing, but when you need another 39 people available to get through it, well, it just takes something away.

The other thing of it is, to me anyway, putting in hours of content knowing that only a small percentage of your player base will actually see it (unless they go back to do it when it has become trivial) bothers me more than a little. I never saw Molten Core, never raiding Black Rock Spire an some others, and I was playing from day 1 of WoW’s release.

Rerollz: Could you share with our readers what your most memorable moment in playing an MMOG?

R.A. Salvatore: There were many, and all from EQ. I was playing a wizard, hunting the Ancient Cyclops in the Southern Desert of Ro for my Journeyman’s Boots. Night after night, I’d sit in the desert from high vantage points, watching and waiting. I made a friend in that time, a fellow traveler hunting the monster. Well, one night I got him, and got my boots. A few weeks later, I happened to be running through South Ro when I saw my old buddy still on the hunt. We chatted as I continued through the zone when I came over a ridge and ran right into the Ancient Cyclops. I killed it and held the loot in place, while I called out for my friend to come over, but right before he looted the item, another guy zipped by and “ninja-looted” us. To make matters worse, this guy then proceeded to taunt us and when I told him I’d report him, he just laughed and logged off.

Okay, I wrote his name down and kept it near my computer.

A few weeks later, I was in Greater Faydark, which was our auction area before the expansions, when someone called out for a teleport to North Karana. Being a wizard, I went to answer, when I suddenly noticed the name.

Yep, it was him. Knowing that no one would actually read the text box for a translocate spell before clicking “Accept,” I sent him on his way…to the middle of the new and very deadly Cazicc Thule. I immediately got a whisper from the guy, “Oh my god, you sent me to the wrong place! I’m in Cazic!!!!!”

“Ouch,” I replied. “That’s a bad place.”

“Come and get me out of here!” he typed back, and I could readily envision the monsters closing in all around him.

“Are you crazy? I’m not going there. That’s a bad place.”

So he started yelling at me, via whispers, and I just replied, “Hey, you’ve got J-boots, run out.”

Then he realized who I was. And yes, I let him die, and hope he spent a month trying to get his body back.