Marketing monkeys making noise

March 12, 2012

Entertaining read from Jef Reahard over at Massively about F2P, from the mouths of some of the industries ‘best’ in that area. Not sure where SOE, NCSoft, Perfect World, and GamersFirst rank on your all-time list, but that is who was talking.

First the entertainment portion:

“German gamers like to think a lot, whereas American gamers like explosions,” Merel said.

“Chinese players are willing to grind it out, and work for it,” Young agreed. “American players won’t put up with that.”

“American players need a context, or a story, or a reason to go in [a dungeon],” Levy interjected, before going on to say that the only real context is loot and rewards. “In an MMO, the reason is the loot. The reason is that I’m getting something cool.”

“That is what MMOs have devolved into,” Georgeson laughed.

The above would be insulting if it was not true. I mean we are talking about the same playerbase who bought a million boxes of SW:TOR to play an MMO remember. Farmville was a big deal. Germans love wargames. And Asians are STILL playing Lineage in huge numbers. He should have also included that all South Americans play to troll (huehuehue BR Mord es #1 right?).

Joking aside, the last line is more tragic than it is funny. Mass market MMOs ‘work’ because they are heavily dumbed down versions of what the genre originated as. And really, to reach the mass market in ANYTHING, it has to be ‘accessible’, which means the average dummy has to get it enough that you get his money. It’s why millions shop at Walmart, summer blockbusters work, pop music is what it is, and it’s why WoW is trying to recover by adding pokemon and pandas.

But like any pop fad, the masses will (have?) move on, and when they do, the people left are the ones who enjoyed the genre to begin with, and likely DON’T enjoy what was produced during the ‘mass marketing’ phase. Boy bands that get manufactured a week after that fad ends become laughable rather than successful. Movies that cash in a few months late on whatever was ‘trending’ fail. And mass-market MMOs will be no different.

Well, one difference. MMOs take year to produce, so if you are working on a WoW-clone right now, you missed the boat by about two years. SW:TOR would likely have worked in 2007. LotRO did after all. But not so much in 2012.

Getting back to the F2P aspect, is that model itself a fad, or is it really the evolution of payment? A bit of both I believe. I think the predatory F2P models, the ones designed like casino games are a fad. They are the ‘new shiny’ to lure in the mass market dummies, and until the dummies really catch on, they will keep falling for the tricks. Margins on fooling dummies are high, as Zynga has show (bonus profits if you can exploit people before rules/laws change to make that illegal).

What I don’t believe is a fad is the ‘good’ F2P model, as used in a game like League of Legends. Rather than relying on trickery or feeding into peoples weaknesses (buy this item to get stronger, so you suck less!), Riot sells fluff. But the fluff is of high-enough quality to sell. Combine the quality of the store items to the fact that LoL itself is one of the best games out, and it’s not hard to see why LoL is printing money.

Of course LoL would have been successful as a $50 box game too (it’s a good game, those sell), but not nearly to the level it has achieved under F2P. THAT is the true value of the model; if you produce something really good, you can earn WAY more than what you could under the old model. In many ways it’s the same thing as games going from the flat box price to a box+subscription model. If you create a game people are going to play for months/years, only getting $50 up front is leaving a lot of money on the table. And really, as a gamer, while it would be great to pay less, realistically if I’m enjoying something for months/years, I SHOULD be paying more for that, if for no other reason than to cast my vote for “more of this”.

What most MMO devs have not figured out, or are ignoring to chase short-term Zynga-bucks, is how to add or implement the ‘good’ F2P model into MMOs. Or perhaps they do know how, but also know that the quality of their game is such that the only choice is Zynga-bucks. I mean look at a game like EQ2; clearly the quality is lacking overall, so SOE feeds into the small subset of ‘gotta catch em all’ players and feeds them mount after mount after mount, to the tune of 80% sales (which makes SOE’s Dave Georgeson’s comments about the dungeon creator and beast master class items pretty comical).

Assuming (big assumption) that the Zynga-bucks phase ends, what we will be left with is a market that highly rewards great games, but offers little to generic titles that don’t offer a solid reason to stick around over a competitor (under the old model, if PR could fool you into buying the $50 box, the devs get paid even if you end up hating the game 5 minutes in. Under F2P this is no longer the case). This means that niche games still have their place (the niche can over-pay and/or budgets adjust), while the few ‘top end’ titles will print money like WoW did back in the day. I’m more than OK with that.

Now if only that Zynga-bucks phase would end already…

12 Comments | EQ2, League of Legends, Mass Media, MMO design, Rant, RMT, SW:TOR, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

The more things change…

March 1, 2012

In a sign of the apocalypse, Keen is playing Darkfall again (100% joking, everyone should be playing Darkfall (unless they are playing EVE)), which brings about the old “I’m playing Darkfall until the minute something better comes along” comment we often hear. Darkfall sucks, but it sucks the least amongst fantasy sandbox games (insert Democracy quote here).

Now one could say this is because no one has really bothered to make a quality fantasy sandbox, and so Darkfall is only alive (for three years…) until someone bothers. Sure Mortal Online and Xyson have come out (do we count Fallen Earth here? No, ok), Wurm and ATitD are still out, but shhh. The moment someone bothers DF is dead!

Another popular comment to make here is that fantasy sandbox MMOs are niche and not an area worth pursuing. Yup, only Sci-Fi Excel sandbox MMOs can get 400k subs after 8 years (most successful MMO not called WoW, no big deal), and a fantasy equivalent has no chance. Niche yo. The big money is in themeparks, as clearly demonstrated by… well that one game use to make a lot of money! Ignore that all the other AAA themeparks to come out after are now in the F2P minors selling you the One Ring or wings. They ships (and maybe sold) a million boxes, and only cost about 10 or 1000 times the cost of DF/EVE to make. Success like you read about (in the PR release, telling you that a day after going F2P, F2P-based sales are up 100%. No wai! Still waiting on the follow-up PR release telling me how growth has continued…)

Of course maybe, just maybe, the reason Darkfall is still online, a sub game, with its original servers still up (all two), is because it’s good at what it does, and that what it does is not nearly as easy to get right as people think? Naw, that can’t be it, right? That maybe the fundamental ideas behind the game, ones Aventurine copy/pasted from UO rather than EQ (if you want to do the whole ‘EQ was the original themepark’ thing), work a bit better at this whole “MMO retention” thing the sub model and the genre was built on? Crazy talk.

When I wrote that the genre is finally emerging from the dark ages, part of that is the ability for developers, those talented and those working for EA or SOE, to finally be given the chance to produce something that is not DoA. Post-WotLK WoW is trash, and no matter how talented the dev team, being tasked to copy trash is still going to result in trash. It might have a cool soul system attached, it might have a great fantasy IP, or it might be fully voiced, but at the end of the day you built off of trash, and no amount of good ideas or tweaks is going to change that foundation.

And so now, finally, after 7 or so years of repeating the same mistake and seeing the genre come to a grinding halt in terms of innovation (CCP aside, of course), we are starting to see signs that real MMOs might start getting made again. Be they in the indy space (Pathfinder) or the ‘AAA’ space (GW2), finally the core is not being built on the solo-hero trashheap that everyone was convinced worked so well if you only did X or spent Y.

So hopefully in 2012 or 2013, we do see a game or three that comes out and is that “better than DF” MMO. Maybe then AV won’t have the luxury of not updating the game for A YEAR! Maybe finally as much effort/resources will be put into refining that formula rather than racing to the bottom of the ‘accessible’ failheap, and we end up deciding which MMO to play on merit rather than buying a box and praying the content lasts until the next one ships.

It’s happened before, after all, but not many were paying attention (or had internet) back then.

20 Comments | Age of Conan, Allods Online, Darkfall Online, EQ2, EVE Online, Fallen Earth, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Rant, Rift, SW:TOR, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

What’s a man to a king, what’s a king to a god, what’s a god to a non-believer?

January 27, 2012

My post about the 1% in F2P games did not finish my thoughts on that topic completely, and hopefully in this post I can bring all of this around and wrap it up (not likely). The predatory nature of the model, and how it influences developer focus, are very important aspects, but equally important are the options players have, and how their voice might be heard.

Compare the LotRO cash armor incident with EVE’s monocle fiasco.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that selling items of power (be they BiS or not) has a little more impact on a game than selling an overpriced fluff piece, right? And long-time LotRO fans have every right to suggest that their game is heading (plummeting) down a slippery slope. This is especially true in a game like LotRO, where supposedly the integrity of the IP is so important. WoW has always had its fair share of silly crap, so sparkleponies almost make sense, but LotRO was a pretty serious game in terms of respecting the IP.

Yet it’s CCP and EVE that changed course and listened to player demands, while Turbine further insulted their players with some weak-ass explanation of why selling The One Ring is not that big a deal.

EVE, because it’s a sub-based MMO, is ruled by the majority (more on this in a bit), while LotRO is ruled by the 1%. The only way Turbine is going to pull the cash gear out of the shop/game is if the 1% not only refuses to buy it, but also stops buying everything else. And like I stated previously, sadly the 1% are not exactly die-hard MMO purists or hyper-invested in the future prospects of that MMO. They show up, grab all the candy, and leave when they overdose on sugar, only to be replaced by the next ‘child’ with too much money.

About EVE, and sub MMOs in general: While CCP’s goal is ultimately to get as many subscribers as possible, this is by no means accomplished by catering to the casual majority at the expense of the die-hard minority. Again, one SynCaine is worth 30 Casual-Calvins (formerly known as Casual Billy). And not only that, but one SynCaine keeps those 30 Casual-Calvins playing for months/years, where if left to their own devices the Calvins would “run out of content” in a month, while also failing to attract a single friend. If you want to see what happens to an MMO when you drive away the hardcore to cater to the casuals, take a look at current-day WoW, and Blizzard scrambling to replace the churn rather than attempting to retain players. If you are a current-day WoW player, what does that stance by Blizzard tell you?

The Jita riots in EVE were not organized by the Calvins, but in order to be effective the casuals were herded over and told to shoot the pretty structure. And then when the content-drivers started to unsub, it did not take long for their flock to follow.

CCP’s hand was forced because of the sheer number of lost accounts, but those losses were not driven by a lack of catering to the casuals. Hell, Incarna was the most direct attempt from CCP to do exactly that, to ‘break EVE out of its niche’, and while certainly not perfect, it did somewhat accomplish its goal (casuals love dresses after all). But casuals don’t make EVE an 8 year old MMO that is still growing. They never have, and they never will.

Consider the CSM. If there was ever a “let’s listen to the super-hardcore minority” program, it’s the CSM. It’s a collection of players that not only know the ins and outs of a very complicated game, but have been around said game for years. They have no doubt poured THOUSANDS of hours into it, and are willing and able to take large chunks of time out of their lives to fly to another country and talk about it for DAYS straight with the devs. And yet upsetting the CSM to the point of protest is/was the single biggest mistake CCP ever made, and all it took was selling a fluff item. Not gold ammo, not even lower-tier ‘noob help’ items or catch-up potions. Nope. Fluff. Dumb, zero-impact fluff (yes, this oversimplifies the whole issue, but this post is already too long).

It’s also disingenuous, and IMO outright silly, to suggest that when the devs cater to the die-hard minority, they must do so at the expense of the casual majority. Back when I played WoW, all you would hear from ‘casuals’ is how Blizzard needs to stop making more raids that ‘no one’ will ever see, and focus more on the ‘fun fluff’ that casuals can’t get enough of. That since ‘only 1%’ all of players defeated a boss, that content was ‘wasted’ and did nothing for the vast majority of the players.

Of course all of this was happening while WoW was growing at an astronomical rate, and pushing what an MMO could do in terms of a subscriber base further and further. It was also during this time that the die-hards created the UI for WoW, created its first PvP system (town invasions, NPC leader raids), and created all the guides/websites/podcasts that further expanded the popularity and growth of WoW. This was long, long before Mr. T or Chuck stepped in.

EVE in many ways is very similar. Non-EVE players love to point out that most pilots live in Empire as some sort of evidence that PvP does not matter, or that EVE is successful DESPITE its neg-sum PvP. And those who play EVE or at least are able to comprehend a bit of it understand why this is laughable. Why the minority that fights over 0.0 space drive the game. Why people like The Mittani ‘matter’ a whole hell of a lot more than Casual-Calvin ever will. And most importantly, why listening to the CSM (in moderation of course, and still doing their jobs as game designers) is not catering to the minority, but doing what’s best for the game, which in turn is what’s best for everyone playing.

To bring this all the way back around, compare how that mentality, of doing what’s best for the game leading to success, compares to doing what will get the 1% to spend again. Is it any surprise that CCP is motivated and rewarded for putting out something like Crucible, while SOE is pouring resources into coming up with the next ‘wings’ mount? That Turbine is willing to upset a large section of their playerbase just to get a few to buy mid-level gear?

Now both models work. Zynga after all was worth something at some point, right? But pure business model aside, as a player, which game would you rather play? The one getting updated in order to make it better, or the one with an ‘addictive’ shop that is able to lure in the 1% ‘kids’?

25 Comments | EQ2, EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Rant, RMT, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Preying on the weak

January 26, 2012

I have a friend who is in the 1%. No, not the Occupy nonsense, but the 1% of F2P players that spend a silly amount of money in the cash shop. He is the guy who buys up every DLC regardless of what it is. He is the one who buys fluff just to own it. And he is the guy who runs XP pots/boosters/whatever because ‘he can’, even if they don’t make the game actually more fun to play. If it’s in the shop odds are high he has it. Cost is not a factor either, so whether a pony costs $5 or $50 is irrelevant to him.

And he is notorious for playing a game for a month or two and getting bored. He is also fairly anti-social, preferring to solo whenever remotely possible, and is someone who often gets excluded anyway thanks to his attitude. To put it bluntly, he is not someone I’d want in my MMO from an in-game activity/actions standpoint.

Yet in that month or so of playing something like LotRO, he was the ideal customer for Turbine. He certainly ‘counted’ a whole hell of a lot more than anyone not spending, or spending little, in terms of influencing what Turbine should work on next. His voice (wallet) was far more important.

Which brings me to my point: considering the above, is it at all surprising that F2P MMOs do what they do, and suck as much as they suck for people who like the sub model? Turbine selling you The One Ring next month is not done with consideration for the 99% that don’t pay and want the game to remain ‘fair’. It’s not done with consideration for how the average player will feel, or how the game will play once you buy the ability to turn god-mode on. The 99% don’t count. Game balance does not count.

What counts is my buddy putting down $100 for The One Ring, putting it on, one-shotting Frodo, and moving on from the game (because it’s too easy…). You can make a forum post about it, get 1000 ‘likes’ for it, and Turbine will feed you BS about “we never said we won’t sell The One Ring, we said we won’t sell direct passage to the Game-Over screen. God-mode is more of a convenience for our players”.

Now whether this practice is sustainable or not is another issue. We have all seen how ‘amazing’ the F2P conversion is the day after it happens. Announcements/tweets/forums posts all proclaiming activity is up 10,000% (from zero), that everyone loves the new ‘options’ in the shop, and that the game has been giving a new life blablabla PR speak. It’s odd that those same sources fail to continue telling us how awesome F2P continues to be a year after, but I’m sure that’s just a technical issue and not the reality of everyone checking things out the first day, seeing the same game they left (but now with pay-walls), and leaving after maybe buying a cute dress. Naw.

What’s even more disturbing is that the only way to keep a F2P MMO flying high is not by introducing great new content, or providing a long-term plan, but by ‘encouraging’ the 1% to keep spending. And the only real way that is going to happen is if the shop continues to get re-stocked with bigger and greater things. If The One Ring one-shots Frodo, then next month The Two Ring does it twice as fast and with fireworks after to announce your victory. And looks, its only $125! Soon as Two Ring sales slow, you better believe the devs have The Three Ring ready to go, along with super-Frodo, who is way too ‘epic’ to be taken down by unworthy adventurers and their outdated Two Rings.

And if you think the above is me being over-the-top to make a point, go check out the cash shop in Atlantica Online. Or just check back on this post in a year from now, after the latest LotRO update.

The whole model is also predatory. It targets those too weak/dumb to know better. Because let’s be honest, buying god-mode is not going to keep you playing anything long-term. Buying a pony that now gives you 20% more HP instead of 15% does not make a game more fun. A game does not get better or have more content when every month a new ‘convenience’ item that is more or less required is added. Solving the problem of low-level gear being ‘hard to get’ by selling it is not a smart long-term solution (it makes the cause worse, actually). SOE recently said that 25% of all their sales are ponies. Outside of pony addicts, what real benefit do EQ2 players get from more devs being focused on producing more ‘must have’ ponies? Because make no mistake about it, SOE is most certainly re-allocating more resources to ponies.

You can’t stop stupid. There will be thousands of Diablo 3 players who ruin the game for themselves by sending a silly amount of money to buy gear, just like there are currently pony addictions in EQ2 influencing SOE and One Ring buyers influencing Turbine.

And the worst part if it all is that while the stupid might be a niche, a tiny fraction of the overall playerbase, they are all that matter in the F2P model.

13 Comments | Allods Online, Atlantica Online, EQ2, FreeRealms, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Rant, RMT | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Rebuilding the genre on SW:TOR’s ashes

January 18, 2012

I get the feeling that people misunderstand me when I say that I hope SW:TOR is the death of the AAA themepark MMO. I’m not saying the genre would be better if people did not spend 300m to make an MMO game. I’m not saying that spending 300m to make a themepark is wrong. I’m not saying spending 300m to make Darkfall would be right.

Ok that last part I am sorta saying, but more on that in a bit.

Here is what I do know. I do know that spending 300m to clone WoW does not work. Or rather, I know giving BioWare 300m (or 80, or 500, depending on the report) to clone WoW is a waste of money/time/effort. I also know giving Trion 50m to clone WoW is meh. I know giving Mythic any amount of money to clone WoW is doomed. I know that Turbine is one step away from directly selling you the One Ring if it helps save LotRO from shutting down. And finally, I know giving SOE anything is bound to have it hacked, stolen, and made into something you can’t download anyway.

What I, or anyone else for that matter, don’t know is what would happen if you gave someone not trying to clone WoW 50m. Or 300m.

I know that if you have CCP focused, they produce greatness. I know that when they try to go too mainstream and attempt to sell you jeans or vampires, they get into a lot of trouble. And finally, I know they are at least smart enough to realize it and correct that course.

We have at least one example of an MMO that has stuck to its core, and 8 years later it’s as alive as it’s ever been, and the future is looking brighter than most in the genre. It’s not F2P. It’s not “oh that old dated game”. And it’s not “just naturally seeing burnout like every game always sees” (Sorry Raph).

And look, if you are someone who is actually interested in living in a virtual world that evolves but always retains that thing that originally attracted you, how could you not look at EVE and be amazed and wishing that was the case with your favorite MMO? (If you are someone who intentionally jumps from MMO to MMO every 3 months, a bus can’t hit you fast enough. No offense but fuck off.)

What we also know is that when you give someone like Aventurine a bit of money, they release an MMO that has amazing combat (best in the genre IMO), produces some amazing moments, and is rough around the edges (to put it nicely). It’s also a game lacking in a lot of areas. The economy sucks. Crafting is meh compared to the genre norm, but sucks compared to EVE. It was buggy. It sucks that the population is low. Lack of updates. I could go on.

The point is, that even with extremely limited resources, Aventurine still produced an MMO that did a lot more for the genre than SW does, unless you count teaching the world that voice acting is a complete waste in the MMO space, but I’d say EQ2 already did that in 2004.

Furthermore, who is to say that with 50m, someone, be it Aventurine or otherwise, can’t make a version of Darkfall that not only appeals to its current audience, but also others? If Excel Online can get 400k people to play 8 years after release, are you really going to argue against the fact that Fantasy Excel Online would have no chance at 500k+?

We don’t know because, thanks to WoW being what it is, all of the big money has been spent futile chasing that pipedream. That’s why SW:TOR is so significant. It’s the biggest, most expensive copy/paste attempt yet, and when (not if) it fails in spectacular fashion, one would hope the beancounters will wake up and try something else. The world can’t possibly be stupid enough to throw even more cash down that hole, can it? Because make no mistake about it, it is a hole. It’s NOT working. No one has come even close to what EQ1 did, let alone WoW.

And for all of you non-EVE/DF/sandbox players, for those who only really know WoW and its redheaded stepkids, how do you know you only like what WoW offers? Yes, you don’t like EVE because it’s Excel Online. And you don’t like Darkfall because it’s PvP-only. And you don’t like ATitD because it’s crafting-only. And Wurn is dated, etc.

What if someone spent 50m to produce something of Rift’s quality, but with a world and mechanics that were closer to UO than EQ? That the dev team had a plan deeper than “repeat WoW, but with this tweak”? That the community was more than just the die-hard oldschool UO people (if you believe that myth)?

Could you, just maybe, find a game that had more than a few months of solo content to offer you? Could you, possibly, get into something that got its social hooks into you along with its gameplay? Something that, 6 months in, was just getting started rather than scrambling to tack grind on?

Maybe if that was a reality, you wouldn’t need to keep looking into the future, hoping that ‘the next one’ is going to last a little bit longer. That you would leave not when the ‘Game Over’ screen came up, but when you decided it was time for a break. And when you returned, in a month, a year, or five, the core game that you loved was still there, only expanded with a whole bunch of cool stuff as well. And when you did come back, familiar names were there to welcome you back.

Fantasyland.

Right?

(GW2 Jesus-MMO note: Assuming GW2 really is significantly different from current-day WoW, and assuming GW2 really is an MMO in the ‘oldschool’ sense, GW2 being successful, along with SW:TOR burning, may indeed be that ‘trigger’ event, moving us out of WoW’s faded shadow and into a strange new realm of money being spend on producing actual MMO games.)

Edit: Screw 3-6 months, BioWare is attempting to kill SW now! 80-500m can’t buy you a single glance at the history of ANY PvP MMO? I mean come on; this is 100% amateur hour on the grandest stage. It’s your 1.1 update and you DESTROY the game like this? And then to cap it off, your response is that you are “investigating the POTENTIAL issues”? We all knew this was BioWare’s first MMO. Is this the first time anyone on that team has ever done ANYTHING, including playing for an EG-minute, related to an MMO?

Just shut it down already.

Actually no, keep it online for another month, I’m waiting for 1.2 with more anticipation than I have for anything not called DF2.0.

48 Comments | Age of Conan, Darkfall Online, EQ2, EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Rant, Rift, SW:TOR, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

You should return those glasses to their rightful owner

January 17, 2012

Syp over at Biobreak has a post talking about the pre-2003 MMO market and todays, and how you can’t pay him enough to go back to that time.

First I find this odd, as looking at his About page, I’m not seeing pre-2003 MMOs on his list of games he has played extensively, but maybe that’s just an omission on his part? Maybe he is a pre-2003 MMO vet? Is he just hiding the fact that he was Dreadlord Syp?

Anyway, here is his list of reasons why the genre is better today:

The quest system, dynamic events, full voice-overs, customizable appearances, public grouping, hybrid gameplay (such as STO’s ground/space combat), genre blending, business models

The quest system of 2012 is Cataclysm and SW:TOR. I’ll leave it at that.

‘Dynamic Events’ are a buzzword today for games like Rift, which are painfully static. Dynamic events in games like UO or EQ, which were player-driven, were actually dynamic. And actual events. The killing of Lord British anyone?

Voice-overs – Yup.

Customizable Appearances – In UO you had more options for this than you do today in WoW. With more impact as well. The game also had customizable housing on a scale most games today can only dream about (or declare technically impossible, depending on how little the devs think of their player-base).

Public Grouping – UO had this feature. Only it was called “Talk to that played, see what they are doing, and do stuff together”. When this happened regularly, it was called a guild. And since people actually lived in those worlds, rather than just ‘progressed’ through one hub to the next, knowing the locals meant something. I’d be dying to hear how someone who has experience with that prefers the random dungeon finder instead, as relates to group quality and the overall enjoyment of grouping.

Hybrid gameplay – The genre is better now that we have a poor man’s version of Starfox that we have to pay $15 a month to play? Odd, I was under the impression that when I loaded up an MMO, it was because I wanted to play an MMO, and when I loaded up Starfox, it was because I wanted to play Starfox. That said, UO had chess, although it required two players, so I understand why it would not work today.

Genre blending – We sure are.

Business Models – I love Pay-2-Win enhanced games like Atlantica. That game would suck as a pure sub game. I also love an immersive experience like LotRO turn into a slot-machine. Finally how can you not love what accounts being free does to server communities (lulz what is that?). In all fairness this can work sometimes. LoL being F2P is cool. EVE having PLEX is nice. Games like DDO/EQ2/LotRO/AoC not shutting down but instead milking a few dummies is cool, I guess.

And finally on to his real argument as to why those who enjoyed the genre pre-2003 love it today.

Oh wait he’s done? I see. Fine, let’s move on to the horrors of pre-2003 games, shall we?

You think the quest grind is bad today? Try simply grinding mobs endlessly for no reason other than a lack of other options. Or the horrible death penalties. The lack of real support for solo players. The incredibly obtuse nature of game mechanics and stats. The lack of free-to-play resulting in fewer gaming options on any given day

What game was Syp playing where he was grinding mobs endlessly because he had no other options and that was it? Doesn’t sound like UO to me. Nor AC. Nor DAoC. EQ1 players? The original carebears? Is it you?

Death penalties – The funny thing about WoW-only players is they just don’t know better. Tell them that if they die they lose all their stuff, and their heads explode. Now Syp, I guess being a pre-2003 vet, (right?) knows better. So he knows why the death penalty in UO was awesome. Just how much gameplay came out of the penalty in AC (Darktide, the only version of the game that mattered). And how many of you original carebears have epic corpse-run stories? I don’t think I need to talk about dying in DaoC, do I?

Solo players – What a horrible crime, that in a genre called massive MULTIPLAYER, we don’t cater to solo players. One can only imagine how horrible server communities and guilds were back when the only people playing were those who wanted to be social, who wanted to play something with others, who cared for group progression over personal. The horror! What would I do without little solo-Billy never talking and always being in his personal instance? Do you know how much worse my MMO experience would be without people like him… not around?

Game stats – I’m so glad the genre moved away from needing a website like EJ to play ‘the real game’, where groups are no longer formed based on gearscore, and that we no longer suffer with FOTM builds in games like Rift. That finally, we did away with obtuse things like being stuck playing a character in DAoC and making the best of it, rather than just re-spec’ing. That finally, rather than having to work towards a new build like we did in UO, you can just instantly hop from one solo-build to another. Amazing progress has indeed been made, and it’s clearly reflected in not just the games, but their communities as well.

Lack of free-to-play – Ah yes, the land of infinite quality, where only the best and brightest games dwell, and where only the finest of citizen reside.

I think I get where Syp is going with this. Now that I think about it, the 1997-2003 years were indeed horrible. Dealing with server communities, playing with tight-knit groups that stuck around longer than a month, building a server reputation, being judged not by my epics but by my personality. Just terrible, nightmarish days.

And remember all those awful days of Relic keep raids? Of invading Darkness Falls? Or all that time spent ‘grinding’ away in Minoc? Just talking to other players around your house because, damnit, you had no other options? Remember how painful it was to go into a dungeon in AC-DT, only for it to escalating into a server-wide brawl? Do any of you know how much time I ‘wasted’ fighting over a city in that game? How many people I knew by reputation, how deep the connections were? It was just awful man, awful. Not a single solo instance around, no ‘epic’ gear handed to me, absolutely no way to instantly teleport to a dungeon with some bots to go on an ‘epic’ quest to kill a god (for the 400th time).

Syp didn’t mention these things, but I will. You know what’s awesome about 2012? That thanks to $300m budgets, the games of today are bug-free (just don’t /dance), that they get prompt content updates (delayed until next week), look amazing (SW retro 2004 vibe is great), run great (just don’t turn on those now-gone high textures), have awesome server hardware (up to 10 people in one area) and they offer such a wide variety of things to do compared to games of old.

I mean look, when I’m tired of listening to those B-rate voices on my main solo-quest, I can go and do this side-quest. Solo. While listening to B-rate voices. In only one zone (sorry, planet) See? It’s awesome. So much better than being ‘forced’ to grind the same mob camp (one out of about a few thousand, if we’re talking UO) all day. Assuming I’m not a crafter. Or a shopkeeper. Or a PK. Or an anti. Or exploring. Or sailing. Or acting like an orc. Grinding mobs all day, yo!

Man I’m glad it’s 2012!

(Apologies for it not being Friday)

82 Comments | Asheron's Call, Atlantica Online, EQ2, Housing, MMO design, Random, Rant, Rift, RMT, SW:TOR, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Seems a loaded failtrain has pulled into the station

January 12, 2012

A lot of great stuff floating around today. First is this comment from Rammstein, responding to Azuriel yesterday, related to his and Blizzard’s claim that Cata failed because it was too hard:

Anything that Chilton says to the New York Times is “established fact”? LOL. You never considered any of the following?

1. He could be lying.

2. He could be wrong, which looks more likely when you consider he is part of the design team responsible for the drop.

3. He could be both lying and wrong, the most probable scenario.

4. He could be right. In this horribly unlikely case, what he said is STILL NOT ESTABLISHED FACT, as that would require something establishing it as a fact besides someone just saying it to someone else.

-Rammstein

I remember hearing Chilton’s comment when it was originally made, and had a similar reaction to Rammstein (I might have blogged about it, not sure, too lazy to look). To take the word of someone who is partially responsible for sinking a runaway success as gospel is… silly at best. If anything, I’m pretty sure Blizzard has been writing a great “What not to do” book of MMO design since WotLK. MoP should be a thrilling conclusion.

And in that book, they should also include some footnotes, one being this. Raise your hand if you are shocked that a game that was good and then went full-on WoWtard is seeing players leave? Anyone, anyone? Again, much like WAR, it’s sad to see what could have been a nice entry in the MMO genre turn into a pile of wasted code.

Speaking of a pile of wasted code, this is amusing. If 300m can’t buy you semi-decent graphics that work (let’s be honest, even the high-res stuff still looks very meh compared to something like Skyrim), is there any hope? Sure, it’s impossible to catch something random like /dance turning on godmode, and we all know having more than a dozen players on a screen is technically impossible (I write this as I undock from Jita 4 4, with everything maxed (real maxed, not ‘high is a bug’ maxed), and my FPS sitting at 60), but is it too much to ask for 2008-ish graphic options? But hey, at least they shipped with AA enabled, right? I mean only a super-indy game from 2003 (Darkfall) would ship without that feature enabled… Oh… Hey… voice!

The worst part of all this high-res nonsense is that BioWare assumes everyone playing SW:TOR is an idiot (I know, I know). “Oh the ‘high’ setting is a UI bug”, “No no, the current high really is high, even though the beta high looked much better…”, or that long explanation of how drawing characters on a screen works. Thanks Doc. I never considered how having more characters might be taxing on a machine. Next you are going to tell me the whole problem is exponential! Hopefully they have emailed that wonderful discovery to Nvidia so maybe they can start working on a solution. And if only we had internet connections faster than 14.4…

Maybe it’s a generational thing? All of the current devs that believe handing out epics = retention while they stand on pillars just need to finally exit the industry, and maybe we can get some money spent on non-insta-fail design?

That’s not going to happen, is it?

Oh, one more point: all this “money is in casual themeparks, deal with it” crap. Hi, themeparks have/are failing, and they cost a hell of a lot more when they fail (WAR, AoC, Rift, EQ2, etc) than some 10m indy MMO that never got a chance (poor Shadowbane). Yes, WoW had 11m subs. Blizzard made a ton of cash. Everyone wishes they were WoW. I get all that. It’s not 2007 anymore. No one has even come remotely close to replicating WoW no matter how much they spent or how hard they mashed copy/paste. The current WoWs in gaming? A ‘hardcore’ PvP game and two ‘hardcore’ PvP games (LoL and BF/CoD).

Also Minecraft made a million dollars (read that in the Office Space “guy who invented the pet rock made a million bucks” voice)

42 Comments | Darkfall Online, EQ2, EVE Online, League of Legends, MMO design, Random, Rant, Rift, SW:TOR, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Getting back to the source

January 11, 2012

Jester has a post up about how Sovereignty works in EVE, and how the game might benefit from borrowing some ideas from Perpetuum in that area. A good read as always, and it brings up a larger point: competition amongst MMOs can be a good thing, and ultimately if the devs are smart the real winners are the players.

Devs being smart is something that seems to be lacking in the genre of late.

Take for instance Rift. In beta, when Rift was limited to only one large zone (the 1-20 game), it was a great game. Players quickly learned which areas were the elite ‘tough’ areas, which parts were easier, and the different hubs truly felt like hubs given the player activity and uses. Combine this setup with how the invasion system worked back then (far more active, more impact to hubs), and while the ‘world’ back then was still a zone, it felt much larger and grander than the typical themepark zone.

The day-before-release nerf to invasions happened. The after-20 zone layout happened. And finally 1.2 happened.

And while this is just me speculating, IMO Trion tried to WoWify Rift. More speculating; they did it because WoWbies tried Rift and wanted it to be, well, WoW. It’s what the locust do after all. How’s that working out for Rift now? It’s one thing to ask your community for suggestions and such. It’s another to just blindly give the players exactly what they are asking for, regardless of how it fits into your game or what you originally set out to do.

What if Rift, start to finish, was like the beta version of the game? The one that was near-universally praised. The version that, for those how tried it, saw a game that, while still firmly themepark, at least felt a little different. Had a little more… MMO to it?

What if Rift borrowed from Guild Wars? 1-20 level game just to teach you the basics, and then all zones tuned to level 20, each one different based on theme and setting rather than level range. Make invasions really matter, allow them to dominate a zone to the point the players are ‘locked out’ until they rally together and fight back. At worst, one of the ten zones you can visit as a lvl 20 is blocked, big deal. Expand the game in that area, horizontally, rather than just repeating the same world event every few months, tacking on raids, and having everyone wait for the inevitable level increase and total content reset/replacement.

But, because while Rift was still cooking, WoW had its 11m ‘subs’, Trion borrowed from Blizzard rather than a different source. Same can be said for Mythic and WAR, Funcom and AoC, and today BioWare and SW:TOR. The results are in for WAR/AoC/Rift, and it’s not rocket science to predict what SW is going to look like in 5 months.

What’s amusing about all of this is that, because EQ1 had 500k subs and UO/AC ‘only’ had 100-250k, the big suit copy/paste monkeys looked at EQ1. And it works for a while, because for all its faults, at least EQ1 was still an MMO. And so was WoW origin. And… well we all know how things went, and what the ultimate result is.

So now, does the genre gravitate back towards EQ1-style design, or does it go full-circle to its roots, where we start seeing teams create worlds and make them work, rather than settling on a theme and tossing in some MMO concepts to calling it a day?

Is it 6 months yet?

45 Comments | Age of Conan, Asheron's Call, beta, EQ2, EVE Online, Guild Wars, MMO design, Rant, Rift, SW:TOR, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

The more things change…

December 1, 2011

Timing is everything.

Today Raph has a post showing a 3-part “History of MMOs” video. (well worth watching btw, especially for those who started playing post-2004)

Also today Tobold has a post about how bots could easily play certain MMOs better than players.

In the video, the narrator credits WoW being more linear and accessible as a major source of its success.

The more linear/accessible your game, the easier it is to create a better-than-the-player bot for it.

The… oh, mild connection between ‘dumb as bots’ gameplay and ‘mass market’ is hopefully not lost here.

This of course is not entirely negative. WoW is/was, after all, a great ‘intro to MMOs’ game for many. Whether that same crowd takes the next step into ‘real’ MMOs is up for debate. Certainly a title like SW:TOR is not helping people take that next step, but on the other hand SW tanking BECAUSE it’s an entry-level title in a market of vets (I use that term very loosely) will do some good. If we take one step further, buy into the hype, and assuming GW2 is indeed an MMO that fixes all previous MMO woes while not being a ‘dumb as bots’ title, and it’s successful, then we (MMO players) all win going forward.

Or you continue to laugh/cry at the genre while FiS.

Hopefully both.

13 Comments | Asheron's Call, Console Gaming, Dark Age of Camelot, EQ2, EVE Online, Guild Wars, MMO design, Random, Rant, SW:TOR, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Bad content burns you out

September 28, 2011

While talking about the fun curve, Tobold addressed something he and I have been going back and forth on for a bit: do you burn-out on an MMO, or do you quit because the game changed?

Before we go on, I understand that the easy answer is “it depends”, but for the sake of making a blog post, lets continue.

If Cata was BC/WotLK, you would not have quit, right? -Me

I am not certain. It is hard to look into alternate universes where thing would have happened differently. I liked WotLK more than I liked Cata, but maybe that hypothetical “more fun if Cata had been WotLK” would only have made me play a month or two more – Tobold

Tobold wrote more after that, see his blog for the full reply.

Cata caused Tobold (and many others) to quit, while at the same time Tobold (and likely many others) were already growing tired of the formula that is WoW. The Cata changes simply accelerated the path to “not having fun anymore”. And like Tobold says, had Cata been WotLK, perhaps it would have bought Blizzard another month or two, but the same-old feel would still likely have kicked in.

But what if Cata had not only been better than it was, but better than WotLK? What if the expansion had been something like (insert your favorite MMO expansion)? What if, instead of every 2 years, Blizzard released an expansion every year, with enough ‘stuff’ to keep players entertained until the next one?

Isn’t that… the point of the MMO model? (Or was anyway) And more importantly, isn’t that the ideal MMO experience? To have a game that is constantly evolving in a positive way, while retaining the core that got you interested in the first place?

Isn’t that why we all thought MMOs would dominate gaming forever, because instead of consuming a set amount of content and moving on, we would now be in a world that constantly provided us with more content, enabling us to stick around ‘forever’? And, well, isn’t that what happened ‘back in the day’? How long did you play EQ1? How quickly did people ‘burn out’ on AC1? Did anyone EVER see all of the content in UO back when that game still had a dev team?

On the flip side, we have plenty of examples of devs trying to do just that, and instead of adding positive content, they add trash AND screw the core up. Rift in beta vs Rift today will always stick in my mind, but WoW has slowly (or not so slowly, depending on who you ask) fallen off as well for many. Point being, changing the game can just as easily make it worse than make it better, and if you have a good thing, the ‘safe’ play is just to feed people ‘more of the same’ until it stops working, and then you go F2P, shut down, or do something drastic.

The reason I don’t believe that burnout is ultimately inevitable is because we have solid examples to suggest otherwise. I mean, Tobold has played WoW for 6000 hours. Are you really going to tell me it takes 6000 hours to reach burnout? Or was WoW so good that burnout was not a factor until the game itself started slipping? I played UO until Trammel, I played DAoC until ToA, I played WoW until TBC, I played Rift until 1.2. In not one of those games did I move on because of burnout. It did not take years to burn out on UO/DAoC, months for WoW, or weeks for Rift. Time was not a factor; the games changing was what did it.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that EVE, an MMO that has kept its core solid (blowing up spaceships), while at the same time evolving more than most, has seen and continues to see growth, even after 7 years. If Online Excel can do it, why can’t others?

33 Comments | Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot, EQ2, EVE Online, MMO design, Rant, Rift, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

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