The magic future should be here any minute now

October 12, 2012

The Massively comments section giveth once more:

My favorite part of F2P is how most people perceive converting to that business model is a failure when the two MMO’s on that spear headed the movement, LOTRO and DDO, saw revenue increases of 200-500%.Doubling your revenue will be the cancer that kills the industry apparently. – wakwazu

Yay regurgitating a (very old) PR release. It must be true.

Do NOT quote numbers that have NEVER been claimed and are not true. I am a long term shareholder in Time-Warner and I can for certain tell you that is and has never been the case. The gaming arm of Time-Warner has been losing money every year since the Turbine acquisition (look it up in their public documents) and has only been kept from complete disaster from their one-off titles, not their MMOs.

Turbine only ever claimed the doubling of revenue in their first quarter following F2P, when they still had long-term loyal customers. Now that they have completely alienated that base, they have never said anything about their revenue again since that time and choose to talk about their users (of which 90% don’t spend a dime on the game). Now Turbine is dealing with a shrinking paying customer base so they come up with increasingly more expensive expansions ($70 for Riders of Rohan) with less content than a typical expansions would hold.

Turbine may be making more money on F2P than they did on P2P, but it doesn’t mean they are making money. There is a big, big difference. – Stock

Oh.

Well at least LotRO improved overall after going F2P, actually making money or not, right?

In the case of LOTRO specifically though, it is my personal opinion that WB’s greed spoiled the game after it went F2P. The in-game ads are garish and too numerous, “lockbox” drops too frequent, and the final nail in the coffin (for me) was the selling of improved stat gear (better than what crafters could create) in the cash shop. For me, LOTRO is a prime example of a great game sliding too far down the F2P “slippery slope.” – Eve

Clearly just one rogue opinion everyone! Surely LotRO players overall love immersion-adding in-game ads, The One Ring in the item shop, and being reminded to pay every few seconds. Sounds like the LotRO I originally hoped for back in 2007, that’s for sure!

But then, I’ve sorta forgotten what the um… mainstream MMO market is like, since I’ve been playing ‘niche’ titles like EVE for so long. Oddly I have a feeling Goonswarm has more active members than all the players logging into DDO today, and CCP is making money off EVE while LotRO is not, but still, EVE is niche yo, so it’s really apples to oranges.

Or rotting graves to fine wine, but whatever. Much like repeating “F2P is the future” every year, repeating that EVE is a niche game compared to… something will surely make it true eventually.

23 Comments | DDO, EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Mass Media, Rant, RMT | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

The long list of mass market MMOs that everyone is playing

October 2, 2012

So if you did not pick up on the fact that yesterday’s post was a long-winded setup to tell you that EVE is the best MMO ever, you are either new here or not paying attention. Also if you are someone who likes to dismiss EVE because it’s a niche MMO in a genre full of mass-market MMOs, this should prove educational.

Let’s cover the niche part first though, since it’s pretty easy. WoW is an outlier with millions of subs, so I’m going to put it aside for now. Yes, EVE is niche compared to WoW, but based on that logic GW2 selling 2m boxes is also niche because 12m subs > 2m boxes. Same goes for SW:TOR, LotRO (who had a lovely “come play with millions of others” ad campaign pre-release. How’s that working out for ya?), or… actually any MMO not called WoW in the NA/EU (silly Asia).

So WoW aside, how do the 400k subs (I know I know, it’s just one guy with 400k accounts, and he buys PLEX in-game so even he is not paying anything, but let’s pretend for a moment that somehow magically those 400k subs still somehow count as 400k x $15 per month for the sake of CCP’s revenue) stack up to everyone else? Well no one has 1m subs, so now we are talking thousands rather than millions.

A whole slew of ‘mass market’ MMOs are now F2P because not enough people found them worth $15 a month. SW:TOR, which will soon join the F2P fail-ranks because it could not keep its 500k or bust target, cost more money than any MMO before it, and EAWare famously stated that if you are not spending $300m, you can’t compete with WoW. I guess if you DO spend $300m+, you can’t compete with EVE either. In fairness to EAWare EVE probably cost somewhere close to 300m to develop as well. Well 300m Yen anyway.

GW2 just launched and rewrote the whole MMO formula, including that nagging issue of having to pay to keep playing, because really, who likes paying when you can get the exact same thing for free? Not surprisingly GW2 sold fewer copies than Skyrim though, another “buy the box and play forever” fantasy title. To be fair, Skyrim is in the more mass-market sandbox genre, while GW2 has to carry the heavy burden of being a themepark. Also the NPCs in Skyrim are more helpful and less likely to go poof after a month, and the dynamic events don’t repeat as often. Both games do feature loot piñata dragons, meh combat, and nice visuals. I’ll be kind and not compare the main storylines.

Rift is still a sub-based MMO, and it’s a mass-market themepark. It has fewer subs than ‘niche’ EVE if various data sources are to be believed, and somehow if Trion retained half a mil subs I think we’d here about it. Plus get back to me when Rift has 400k subs at its ten year anniversary. Hey only about 8 years to go, but to be fair when EVE launched it had way fewer subs too, so maybe Rift will grow much like EVE has. Maybe. That said, out of the last few years, Rift is the only major MMO to actually stay a sub-based MMO for a year+, so it would not be totally unreasonable to call it the most successful launch since… WoW?

So I ask, what ‘mass-market’ MMO are people talking about when stating EVE’s 400k subs is ‘niche’? I thought we got over the whole “WoW or bust” thing in 2007? Or are people really still thinking the ‘MMO market’ is 12m strong, and surely the NEXT title is going to hit that mark? Because if you do I’m sure EAWare has a spot for you on the team! Or maybe Funcom. Or Mythic. Wait is Mythic still a thing? No, why, what happened? Didn’t they have that huge surefire IP and mass-market MMO that was going to crush WoW? (I hate you whiteshades.)

And once you realize that 400k subs is not niche, but near the top of the not-WoW market, you can reasonably set expectations for design and market size if you are actually aiming to design a game that is intended to be played beyond the first month. You know, an MMO. Or what the old folks called an MMO before Anet came along and ‘fixed’ it for all of us.

Furthermore, if you can’t make $18m in yearly revenue work for you and your dev team (100k subs for a year, and assuming zero box sale money), you are doing it wrong. Probably to the tune of $300m wrong that leads the head doctors to call it quits because people pointed out that you delivered $300m worth of garbage while helping to shut down a game people loved (which may or may not have had more players than SW:TOR currently has actually playing).

But seriously, $18m a year is not peanuts, and I don’t think retaining 100k people for a year is asking for the moon. Hell, maybe would call that hyper-niche and laugh while they go back to their 1m+ subs MMO not called WoW, so it must be easy! And look, if EQ1 got 500k people back when you had to use a rotary dial to login, I’m pretty sure a team of devs can make something today to get 100k. Or 50k and try to survive off $9m in revenue. The horror.

Or you know, keep pumping out those ‘mass market’ MMOs all the kids are talking about. The ones just crushing it in terms of numbers like… WoW. Release in 2004.

Yea, those!

62 Comments | Age of Conan, Aion, DDO, EQ2, EVE Online, Fallen Earth, FreeRealms, Global Agenda, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Rant, Rift, SW:TOR, Vanguard, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Pick a group, design for it, don’t get greedy

September 28, 2012

When I see people write that no MMO can hope to retain people beyond 3 months now, like they did back in the big 3 days, I can only shake my head, laugh, and think about my recent two years with Darkfall, my almost three with EVE, and the infinite amount of time I’m about to spend with MMO baby jesus DF:UW.

Snark aside, the reality is that most MMOs after 2004 are designed, either intentionally (GW2) or not (SW:TOR), to be short. The first time I heard EAWare mention the 4th pillar is the first time I said SW:TOR is going to fail (look it up kids). That one single design decision is all I needed to know about the game, because NOTHING could have saved SW:TOR from being a short-burst game after the 4th pillar was announced. (Short of going in the total opposite direction after the story end. Gee I wonder what EAWare is focusing on of late?)

Consider these two stark contrasts. In GW2 you have access to EVERYTHING your character can do combat-wise at level 30, which lets be really kind and say takes 30 days to reach. In EVE, you won’t be able to sit (forget flying well) in one of the biggest ships (Titan) in the first 177 days, assuming you do NOTHING but straight train towards that (and completely ignoring how you would actually acquire one).

The question at hand is not which method you would prefer, or which one is more ‘fun’. The question is simply this: out of the two options above, which one sounds like it’s designed for a game that the devs expect you to play long-term, and which one is designed to be played in a short burst?

Of course for the 177 day training to be found worthwhile, everything else around it must also work to some extent, and in EVE it does. I’m by no means saying that long-term retention is as simple as extending the ‘grind’ and calling it a day. As I’ve said thousands of times now, long-term retention design is HARD. Really, really hard. But hard does not mean impossible, and under the right conditions, long-term retention done well can yield WoW (12m subs). Most likely it yields EVE (400k subs). Maybe if you really go niche it yields Darkfall (100b subs). So long as you properly identify your market size and deliver something for it, you can be successful on a variety of levels. Not everyone (anyone?) can be WoW, and that’s ok.

And it’s important to remember that much of the current MMO population is not interested in long-term retention. Whether someone outright states they don’t want to play something longer than a month, or has a playstyle that reflects it (solo), these people are not looking for the same thing people interested in living in a virtual world are. They might drop in and visit (tourists), but regardless of the design, you just can’t retain them. (WoW is the MMO first-love for many, which is why it draws them back time and time again. It’s another perfect-storm situation that can’t be repeated. It’s also dying and something like 5 people bought into Panda-time and 3 of them have already quit, so whatever).

The mistake so many devs have made is believing that they CAN retain them, if only they tweak the design and add more solo PvE content to a PvP game (WAR), or put in a 20 level pre-game to the core game (AoC), or spend a billion dollars on one-off voice acting (SW:TOR). These design decisions sacrifice the long-term for a quick burst, and the expected result happens; you get your short burst at the expense of your long-term. It’s why MMO release after MMO release looks exactly the same, and why it has convinced some that that’s just how things are today.

The reason I cheer for games like SW:TOR to fail is because, hopefully at some point, developers will wake up and realize you can’t attract the millions of short-burst players AND retain them by trying to design for both.

If you want to make a short-burst MMO like GW2, go for it. Sell the box and don’t expect more after, have a business plan that supports that expectation, and make the best one-months-worth of content you possibly can. If you do it right you will sell a whole lot of boxes and people will move on happily a month later. Just don’t do PR where you proclaim to have ‘fixed’ the MMO genre and all will be good.

And if you want to get $15 a month from a few hundred thousand people, please design accordingly as well. That group has shown a willingness to deal with valleys if the peaks are worthwhile, but they better have something to do in six months, and that something better not be the exact same thing just reskinned from the first month. Plan your business model accordingly, figure out a way to handle the tourists initially, and don’t get fooled into thinking you have something bigger than you actually do. Long-term retention MMOs are a niche. It’s a pretty sizable niche, and $15 a month for 6 months is more than $60 once, but yea, it’s hard to get right.

As players, we have to be honest with ourselves. You can’t expect the highs of long-term moments to fit into your ultra-casual schedule. The peaks and valleys will be more muted because in the MMO genre, you get what you put in. That said, it’s not nearly as hard to be part of something big as some make it out to be. World-first raiding and the time/dedication it requires is not the only way to get a huge high from an MMO. Just being a regular member of a guild doing something big/cool might be enough.

Of course, that guild can’t do something really cool if everyone moves to the next game in a month, but that’s the tradeoff you accept when deciding between the two styles.

21 Comments | Age of Conan, Darkfall Online, EQ2, EVE Online, Guild Wars, MMO design, Rift, SW:TOR, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Splitting the genre in two

September 27, 2012

Let’s move past why GW2 sucks and onto a bigger topic; why so many recent MMOs suck, shall we?

Chris thinks all MMOs are good for 3 months or less, and that’s just how things are today. Keen has a pretty solid counter, but it raises the question that will (hopefully) clear the air here: are you looking to play a game for a while, or not?

Because I think that really cuts to the root of the issue. In the ‘good old days’, I think the vast majority of MMO players WANTED to get sucked into something long-term (group 1). Much of the original hype behind an MMO was that it was an RPG that never ended, and that is EXACTLY what people wanted. New Ultima game but with unending content? Hell ya! Take my money!

Today not everyone is on the same page. There are a lot of players who DON’T want to get sucked into something long-term (group 2). They WANT a 3-monther or something to do for a month and move on, and nothing short of a miracle (WoW) is going to change that.

One group is not more right than another, and however you arrive at either group is an unrelated issue (got old, more money, kids, whatever).

What does matter is that the two groups are looking for very different experiences, yet are being lumped into one group (MMO players). Worse still, studios are designing games with the impression that they can design content for the short-term group, and expect long-term retention. SW:TOR is the latest poster-child for this, but it’s just one of many such failures. And make no mistake, these games ARE failures, because the target they are aiming at is WoW, which prints money not because it sold a ton of boxes, but because it RETAINED millions of players for years. EAWare expected SW:TOR to RETAIN at least 500k subs, and at one time the expectation was 1m+. They sold a ton of boxes because group 2 wanted something new. They failed because solo-story content does nothing for group 1, and even if it did, group 1 is just not that big.

Both markets, the short-term ‘MMO’, and the original model, are viable. EVE is an undeniable success, DESPITE the fact that it’s a niche within a niche product (non-IP Sci-Fi with no avatar). CCP is successful because they understand who their market is, and they design the game around the long-term retention of their core rather than the short-burst of group 2 (Incarna aside). Misleading talk aside, GW2, much like GW1, will likely do fine because the model is not around providing long-term entertainment, but rather just a short burst every now and then.

This also clears up the F2P vs sub aspect as well. F2P ‘works’ because a tiny subset of your entire base is willing to pay enough to subsidize everyone else. That’s why so much of the design around a F2P is aimed at catering to that tiny minority, or to convert some of the unpaying masses into cash cows. By contrast, the sub model is designed to provide enough content for the long-term majority, in the hopes that most people will stick around and play/pay.

And if you combine the intent of group 1 or 2 with the business model and content design around a game, you have your target.

Developers are doing a decent job catering to group 2. There are countless F2P titles that are good-enough to play for a month, and occasionally one will get some cash out of you. Those that don’t, shut down or get their support slashed, but even the most marginal titles end up surviving in one form of zombie mode or another.

Designing a solid title for group 1 is much harder, in part because it’s so different from the rest of gaming. Instead of just making sure the current content is fun once, the devs must consider how the content will play in a year, or for the 100th time, or when someone with 1000 hours plays alongside someone with 10. That’s hard. Just as EAWare, Mythic, Turbine, or any other studio that has tried and failed. Maybe the original big three were really lucky, or really good, or understood the market better than most do today. Regardless, it worked then, and it continues to work today.

The extreme example of success in group 1 is WoW, but that’s misleading if you buy into the fact that WoW’s success was as much good timing as it was solid design. Make no mistake, 2004 WoW was very well designed, but that’s not the entire story IMO.

Regardless, it’s unlikely that we will see another WoW-like success. Far more likely is someone hitting EVE-like numbers. And again, CCP is making very good money off EVE. But that’s happening because they understand the size of the market, in addition to how best to cater to it.

You can’t spend $300m today because you predict 1m+ subs. It’s not going to happen. Plan to get 100k with a solid title, figure out the budget to make that happen, and good luck. And let’s not kid ourselves, with 100k subs you can make a VERY solid game. Maybe you won’t have all your dialog voiced by professional actors, but you won’t be limited to Pong-like graphics either. Spend smart, spend S-mart!

46 Comments | Age of Conan, Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Darkfall Online, EVE Online, Fallen Earth, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Rift, SW:TOR, The Elder Scrolls Online, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

EVE: Learning curve

September 25, 2012

Note: Not all MMOs shown are still popular

The above is a little old (PotBS…) but is still often used. EVE, compared to most MMOs, is indeed a tough game to get into and stick with. However in terms of tutorials and explaining the basics of a very complex game, I believe what CCP has in place today is about as good as it’s going to get, and all of the UI enhancements of late have lowered that bar as well (it’s still higher-than-average, but at this point that’s due more to the game’s complexity than the UI getting in your way).

What keeps the above image true is the sandbox nature of EVE; by design it does not hold your hand and show you all of the pretty sites like a themepark, and for many that lack of guidance results in them getting lost and ultimately leaving. Of course it’s tough to admit the failure is on the player, which is why more often than not you will get skewed or simply inaccurate accounts shortly before or after someone leaves (assuming they don’t just fade away without a peep).

One example I’ve seen play out over and over is the ambitious miner. A new player to EVE will go down the mining career path and plan to fly the biggest and best ship for mining. They initially enjoy the slower pace, as well as the ISK and the small market gameplay that goes with it. They are playing EVE like a themepark, ‘gearing up’ and working towards that BiS ship. Problem is, once they hit that goal, or get close enough to see what hitting it will be like, they get bored.

For them, progression has stopped or slowed to a crawl, and they are left wondering “now what?” If they don’t come up with a good answer, they are done. The same cycle exists for the high-sec mission running when he gets into a faction battleship, or for the trader once he gets ‘enough’ ISK.

The problem with all those goals is they are not only short-sighted, but they also just provide you with a tool (ISK) to do ‘something’ with. Mining/mission/trade efficiency is not itself content. The reason you mine or run those missions is you can then turn around use that ISK to do X. If you can’t fill in X, and keep filling in X once your first initiative is complete or gets stale, you will drift away. The advantage EVE has over anything else on the market is the sheer number of choices, and the depth that many can go to.

And in EVE, the biggest source of X is other players, be it alliance-level combat or working with other traders to corner a market or create a new hub. As you get more involved, bigger and longer-term goals start to creep up, and you end up having TOO much to do vs having nothing. This is easily identified by your current training plan; if it’s full and you had to make tough choices, you are sucked in. If you are training aimlessly or just finishing stuff up, you likely lack solid goals (or have a super-advanced pilot, but EVE veterans tend to stick around as the metrics have shown in the past).

I don’t really think the problem can be fully solved, at least not at a mass-market scale. This, ultimately, is why the MMO genre is a niche; the number of people capable and willing to find, set, and follow-through on goals is limited. At the same time, the formula itself clearly works, as EVE’s upcoming 10 year anniversary attests to.

Ultimately it’s all a balance between handholding and mass-market, and inversely retention and longevity. If you are interested in selling a ton of boxes and getting a huge one-month pop, you go one way. If you aim to entertain for 10+ years, you go in the other direction. The middle is either a gold mine or a total disaster, depending on countless factors, not all of which you can control.

23 Comments | EVE Online, MMO design | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

EVE: Vile Rat

September 12, 2012

Many sites have better posts than I could write about the real life death of EVE player Vile Rat, so I’ll just link to one piece in case anyone reads this site and might have missed it. Obviously tragic and terribly sad news.

Leave a Comment » | EVE Online, Mass Media, Random | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

EVE: A POS to call my home

September 10, 2012

Another Jester-lead post for today (GW2 thoughts are brewing, but I can’t quite place my finger on them just yet. Something-something themepark though), this time about the next EVE expansion, and expansions/patches in general.

Jester is worried that much like last year, EVE players are going to be slowly simmering (or perhaps raging) due to a lack of focus on spaceships. I’d have a hard time arguing with him given the current unknowns about the next release, and the potential for it to be little more than “hey Dust is here”. While significant from a tech perspective and good long-term (assuming Dust does well, which I believe it will), if all you care about are spaceships, it’s not a lot to write home about short-term.

But really, if you take a step back, what has the last year done for EVE? How game-changing were Crucible and Inferno? They both included a lot of nice updates and changes, but nothing to really get excited about like the addition of wormhole space or incursions. To me they represented CCP doing some long overdue housecleaning. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s something you need to do and once done, allows you to finally move on.

The problem now is that the ‘move on’ aspect seems to be focused mostly on Dust, and as stated above, core EVE players that only care about spaceships are not going to find that all too exciting. Furthermore, Dust connecting to EVE is also not a game-changer for someone not currently playing EVE and looking for a reason to sign up or return. What CCP needs now is… wait for it… a Jesus feature.

Or at least something major that gets current players excited to play with something new, and potential players to notice and go “hey, that sounds interesting, I need to go check it out”. Which is basically how I regard other MMO updates I read on Massively; unless it’s some major feature that sounds interesting, updates and tweaks don’t interests me at all and I move on. To grab my attention, you need something major. I’m sure I’m not alone on this.

The key to me is striking a balance between keeping your MMO current and in-shape, while also attracting new players or getting former players to return for another go. We have seen far too many MMO devs panic and give up on their current base to chase a mythical “other group”, and one of the major reasons CCP has been so successful with EVE for 9+ years is they have stayed true to the games core and allowed growth to be more natural rather than buying into feature X bringing in a totally new crowd (if we ignore Incarna anyway).

So what Jesus feature should CCP ‘add’?

Redo how Player Owned Structures (POSs) work, turning them from something everyone hates but tolerates into a major goal almost everyone strives for. Because let’s be honest, does anything strike the “pride of playing” cord stronger than owning MMO property in a virtual world? I loved my house in UO, loved owning property in Darkfall, and SWG players will gush about their player cities. Does any EVE player write lovingly about setting up a POS, or how they love hanging out in their high or lowsec POS ‘home’? Does anyone even call it that? Hell even in WH space, we identify more with the current WH we occupy than the POS we live out of.

Redo the feature so it functions more like the housing in UO, where a player can customize the look and function in a modular way (I believe CCP has hinted at this already, but they should be making a full-court push IMO), and make it so its intuitive and easy rather than a strong contestant for most painful activity in EVE (which is saying something).

Make it so owning a small POS, even in highsec, is an achievable goal even for newish players (6 months or so), and something Corporations can collaborate on to gain additional benefits or comforts. Make them look cool, provide something wanted, and perhaps even integrate them into a form of gameplay around avatars like Incarna should have.

Oh, and do it sooner than ‘soon’.

6 Comments | crafting, Darkfall Online, EVE Online, Housing, MMO design, Ultima Online | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

EVE: The highsec player does not exist

September 6, 2012

I like this post by Jester about highsec refining and production, and it brings up an aspect of the game that I think many misunderstand: the highsec player. Or rather, that “the highsec player” does not exist as a single entity. In my opinion there are two distinct groups of players who occupy high-sec space in EVE: those who enjoy highsec life itself, and those who are in highsec because it’s the best place to be for their needs.

The first group can’t (at least through pure game mechanics changes) be moved out of highsec into low/null/WH space. The only place they will move is to another game if forced, and much if not all anti-highsec arguments fail to recognize this. Simply put, if you make highsec too undesirable, these players will not make the move to other areas, they will simply leave. They enjoy highsec for what it is, a mostly non-PvP space devoid of the troubles that plague other areas, be it random PvP roams, sov-loss, WH invasions, whatever. They like the game CCP has created in highsec.

How large this group is I’m not sure, but I’d be willing to bet it’s substantial. Furthermore, while this group has no interest in other areas of EVE, this does not mean they simply take up space and don’t influence low/null/WH space. They do, and in many ways. Be it filling up markets, producing goods, buying PvE-based goods, or any number of smaller impacts, highsec players ‘count’ just as much as the average Goon or AHARM member in the grant scheme of EVE. They also need content updates like everyone else, and I hope CCP is aware of this (I’d argue that the CSM is not, just based on what I’ve read from them).

The second group in highsec are those who would be or are interesting in other aspects of EVE, but live or operate in highsec because it’s the best location for what they want to accomplish. As Jester accurately points out, in many ways, highsec is better than all other spaces for certain activities, and so those who intend to take the path of least resistance find themselves in highsec. This is where the design flaw exists.

When Incursions where overpaying (or were perceived to be overpaying, depending on who you believe), those who wanted to generate ISK with the least resistance ran highsec Incursions, even if they were nullsec alliance members or lowsec pirates. Yet even at this point, Incursion income still did not top C6 WH income, which is why for those willing to take the risks and deal with the troubles (not the path of least resistance) the space was still worthwhile. Had Incursions been as imbalanced as highsec production, few if any pilots would be running C6 sleeper sites, and everyone interested in making ISK would own a specifically fit Nightmare.

The key to moving this second group out of highsec is not to crush highsec itself, but to make the other spaces offer rewards equal to their risks. If production is harder in lowsec because of pirates, it should also be better when done successful, much like C6 WH sites are compared to lvl4 highsec missions or, to a lesser degree, Incursions. Nullsec ores vs highsec ores is an attempt at this, but due to mineral values and the risk/reward ratio, things are not working as well as they should. The same goes for nullsec PvE content, or lowsec PI.

If the areas of the game that are deemed not worthwhile get a boost, the players who currently operate in highsec would move, much like they have with the current imbalance around Faction Warfare sites. At the same times, those with no interest in non-highsec would continue to play and enjoy the game they currently have. The key to any solution is to influence the second group, without crushing the first.

(And as I’ve personally experienced, with the right social structure, motivation, and incentive, even some of those “highsec-only” players can learn to expand their horizons, which I think long-term is why EVE has been so successful.)

30 Comments | crafting, EVE Online, MMO design, PvP | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Someone reprogram the bot

September 5, 2012

…highsec is “Space WoW”: you log in, you grind, you progress. No skill or brain is needed. And WoW is prettier. I left WoW for a competitive game and I found only Space WoW. – Gevlon

That says more about you than about the game. Nobody and nothing forced you to stay in hi-sec and be a trader. – Druur

profit does. Even if I would be the best PvP-er of EVE, I’d be significantly poorer than today. – Gevlon

Posting this here as it’s likely to get edited out by Gevlon on his site soon. And just a quick note for non-EVE players; Gevlon is poor by market standards, so his “profit does” line is hilarious. He has more ISK than the average PvPer, yes, but that’s because the average PvPer is having fun playing the game, while Gevlon is off being a market bot. The best part is when confronted about this, Gevlon claims his goal was never to become rich or do anything significant on the market, just make enough ISK to… something.

Gevlon is right about one thing here; what he is doing does indeed take zero skill or brains, it’s just pure zombie grind, and the reason he has found mild success is because most players would rather blow their brains out than station trade for as long as he has been at it, hence decent margins on simple items like skillbooks or hardwires.

But you gotta love the WoWbies attitude right? Even in a sandbox they manage to grind the fun out of the game for themselves, and despite options so easily available, they just sit paralyzed in their corner and cry rather than doing something about it. The millions of Gevlon-like drones who do their best to emulate a bot, all while complaining that the content is boring, and then paying up for more bot emulation content (this time with a Panda skin!) would be funny if the whole thing wasn’t so sad, and did not dictate so much MMO ‘design’ based purely on catering to the lowest denominator.

At least it’s entertaining blog content, so yay for that?

24 Comments | EVE Online, Rant, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

GW2: Dead Centaurs

August 30, 2012

One of the nice things about being in the initial wave of WAR players was seeing all of the PQs played out more or less as intended. Only the newbie zone PQs were heavily zerged, and even then at least you got to see the three phases and see the ‘story’. This all broke down later of course, when the population was all at the level cap and Mythic forgot to include a third faction for RvR, but for the first few months, PQs worked and they worked well.

Long before even DAoC was a twinkle in Mythic’s eye, during the Ultima Online beta the game featured a living eco-system. The idea was that if players killed too many sheep, the local wolves would hunt players instead of said sheep. If the players killed the wolves, the local dragon would lack food and also attack players or venture further. This all famously broke down when players killed everything and complained about the lack of targets. Before release, the system was scrapped and replaced by the now traditional static spawn system. To this day I think the scrapping of the eco-system is one of the genres biggest regrets, but then again MMO history is littered with stories of players grinding the fun out of a game. We suck like that.

It seems Anet never took the above history lesson, as GW2 is repeating UO history now, and will likely repeat WAR’s history in a few months (the PQ part, they got the 3-faction thing already in place).

Currently in the starter and 20ish human zones, both ‘world’ ‘events’ (quest chains limited to just that zone, but I’m sure some GW2 apologist will explain how those quest chains are in fact world events) are in a permanent victory state, with the centaur ‘fight back’ event getting instantly crushed the minute it comes up. Having experienced the starter zone quest chain, I can say that current players are indeed missing out on some pretty neat content. I’m guessing the 20ish zone’s quest chain is also neat, but after two days of seeing “all points held, you win” on my screen, I can’t tell you. Maybe I can revisit and faceroll it once I hit 80…

The difference between UO’s eco-system and GW2’s quest chains is that in UO, how the local area reacted was both unique and interesting (until it totally broke down anyway). That local area was also not a 1-10 or 15-20 zone, but a ‘real’ location in a world you would visit or live in. The impact was unpredictable because the reaction was not scripted (chained or otherwise), but instead a formula that changed based on input factors (players). EVE’s Incursion system is somewhat similar as well, where if the players beat the MOM site, the Incursion ends and another starts in a different part of the world, bringing all of its benefits and penalties with it.

In GW2 the starter zone is content on demand, and once you have seen it, you move on much like any other themepark. Novelty aside, a level 80 would never just find themselves stumbling through a starter zone they had already finished, unlike in UO where 7x GM would hang out in and around Yew for various reasons. Because of this, if the biggest, most impressive piece of content, ‘world’ ‘events’, are unavailable, you miss out. And not only do you miss out, you can’t do a thing about it. In UO players could organize to fix the problem (the birth of anti-PKs, for instance), while in GW2 all you can hope for is the masses move on and letting the quest chain reset itself. I can’t rise up and become the great defender of the centaurs. Instead all I can do is look at the giant centaur-looking spire, filled with friendly NPC guards, and imagine what it must have been like to take down whatever big-bad was ultimately at the end of the chain.

35 Comments | EVE Online, Guild Wars, MMO design, Rant, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

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