The MMO genre is a niche space, entry 25603

September 14, 2012

“TSW was not buggier than, say, GW2. Nor did it lack things to do.” – tithian

“Personally I found TSW to be sub-par in both combat and graphics, and far inferior to GW2 in game flow. In the beta the “things to do” mostly involved a lot of variations of very slowly killing grey zombies in a grey town / landscape.” – Tobold

“I think you’re proving lono’s point. If it doesn’t have vibrant fantasy settings with flashy combat, dragons and elves, the attention something gets is the fraction of MMO X that does deliver on that front. And guess what, your next MMO will also have a vibrant fantasy setting. And the next, and the next…” – thegaiaengines

Original post and more comments can be found here.

This somewhat reminds me of when Darkfall came out and certain people complained that looting was ‘broken’ or ‘poorly designed’ because you had to drag items off a corpse, or that the combat was unresponsive because there was a delay between drawing your weapon and swinging. That the world was ‘empty’ because not every corner had a pre-scripted purpose for existing, and that the only way to compete in PvP was to max out everything just to ‘catch up’.

On a larger scale, it reinforces the fact that the core of the MMO genre is very niche, but that because of WoW, we have a very large section of players who don’t like niche (or need to be brought into the niche with baby steps, because change is scary!) GW2 right now is stuck in an awkward mid-point, with some systems clearly designed for the masses (hotbar spam-to-win, guided progression, easy leveling) while others could be considered core (insane grind at 80 for gear, sPvP, advanced WvW tactics).

The biggest difference between Darkfall and The Secret World is not levels of polish or innovation, but in expectations. Aventurine understood they were making a niche MMO, and planned accordingly. They hit their target, profited, and because of that we are getting a sequel ‘soon’. Funcom being Funcom, they expected their niche MMO to retain a million subscribers, and because of this TSW is failing. Had the bar been correctly set at, say, 100k subs, TSW would be considered a hit. Feel free to blame Blizzard for this if it makes you feel better (it usually does for me).

Finally, let’s talk about this shall we:

“You are allowed to want both an innovative game AND fun game without it being hypocritical, just like you can want a cheap, good steak (or whatever).” – Azuriel

Az, do you walk into McDonalds looking for a good, cheap steak? How’s that workin’ out for ya? There is a reason a good steakhouse charges what it charges, while at the same time McD’s has served billions with $5 ‘steaks’.

Before they went south, Blizzard was famous for bringing out extremely polished titles, and talent aside, they were able to do this because their titles played it safe and at most took other’s ideas one small step forward. Good business if you can do it, but it only works if you also have other studios pushing the envelope and innovating. There would be no WoW without UO/EQ1, and a major reason WoW was so polished compared to EQ1 was due to that evolution vs revolution approach. The EQ1 devs had little to go off of (MUDs), while Blizzard was able to copy/paste/polish EQ1 to make WoW.

It’s all shades of gray of course. You can’t just put out the world’s most innovative title and expect success if it’s so buggy no one can load it (not at the mass-market level anyway), while at the same time JUST polishing is not enough. After all, while WoW was very much a EQ1 clone, Blizzard did bring a few new ideas to the table, and those few ideas were pretty solid at the time.

But the more you innovate, the further you step out of the known, the higher the chance of something not working as expected. The core MMO players will (generally) roll with it and expect a fix (or exploit the hell out of it until said fix arrives), but the mass-market gamers don’t have that kind of tolerance, patience, and overall investment to stick with a title as it grows.

But then, that’s why the MMO genre is a niche, with WoW being the awkward outlier.

11 Comments | Darkfall Online, Guild Wars, MMO design, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft | 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

Captain Gevlon going down with the Tortanic

August 8, 2012

And… back!

Vacation was very nice, thanks for asking.

TAGN did a very nice job filling in for me on the SW:TOR failure front. I agree with everything in his post, and will only add one thing; while it’s obvious now why SW:TOR is a terrible MMO, it’s important to remember that when the 4th pillar was originally announced, lots of bloggers and commenters were convinced BioWare was aiming at the right target. Hell, even as more info about SW:TOR came out, those people were STILL convinced the game was going to work. And 1.7m or whatever even put down $60+ because they still believed.

The great thing about the best blogging gift of 2012 however is that this is just another step on the fail cascade for SW:TOR. As Wilhelm correctly predicts, EAWare is going to do lots of hilarious things with the F2P model for the game. Time to cook up another batch of popcorn and enjoy the next phase of failure. I’m hoping they put out more of those fancy videos explaining things, those were incredibly entertaining.

The other item of hilarious fail is Gevlon. Where to start… (I’d link to the posts, but with Gevlon editing things as heavily as he does, it’s pretty pointless. That said, it is amusing to read his stuff after the fact, and then try to follow the comments as they talk about things that are no longer there. His editing skills need some serious work.)

Gevlon created a Corp, it failed.

Gevlon created another Corp, it also failed.

Gevlon then posted that EVE is less hardcore than WoW, in a sad justification of why he is going to play with Pandas soon.

While all of this was going on, Gevlon continued to fail to get into a Null entity in the batshit crazy way he wanted to. Why no one jumped on the chance to gain a tackle-titan/fleetboost-titan/noob-carrier/noob-logi pilot still remains a mystery to me…

And while ALL of that was happening, he continued to ‘prove’ that being a human market bot was a way to create some modest wealth (for all non-EVE players, 100b ISK is very modest for market players.) Yes, who knew selling Badger IIs, skillbooks, and hardwires for 2-3 hours a day, every day, for six months straight (!) could make you some ISK in EVE. Also I heard you can mine veld in highsec, c/d? The best part here is Gevlon believes he is providing something of value and teaching this revolutionary method to anyone.

Personal and hilarious failure aside, Gevlon’s little adventure into EVE highlights an important aspect of the game; in order to succeed, you must not only have goals, but be able to accomplish them or fail and learn from the failure. Gevlon took the box of Legos that is EVE and tried to do many things with them. To his credit, at least he had some goals. Sadly, due to his nature, he would not listen when people told him you can’t grow grass from Legos. In that he failed in spectacular fashion over (fits) and over (Corps) and over (Null) again, but unlike the rest of humanity, rather than actually learning from those failures he continued to bash his little green head into the learning-curve wall.

And like many, when ultimately faced with the failure of not having any ‘content’, he has decided to return to safer pastures, to pick up Simon Says again, rather than get into anything of substance in EVE. WoW is nice and safe because it always holds your hand, brings you to the next instance, and tells you exactly how good you did and where to go next. Having ‘goals’ in WoW is easy by design, and for those who lack the ability to self-motivate, or to accomplish anything semi-complex, it works perfectly.

By contrast, EVE does not. Or rather, it does not when you fail to accept even the absolute most basic suggestions. It won’t become obvious why your tackle-Titan is a complete failure until the soon-to-be ridiculed killmail shows up, and even then the feedback is still player-based rather than the game itself telling you why. For someone as ‘unique’ as Gevlon, this feedback loop does not work, or works very, very slowly in the most extreme cases.

Gevlon is right in that EVE is easy however. As almost all of the members of my Corp will attest to, being a new player in EVE and being able to accomplish significant goals is not nearly as hard as it first seems on day one. The amount of support, both in-game and on Vent/Mumble that you can provide to someone in EVE is amazingly high compared to WoW. I can bring that day-one pilot into a C6 wormhole and show him the ropes, and within a week he can provide real value in what some would call an ‘end-game’ space in EVE. Of course, I would never take someone like Gevlon, but luckily those types are easy to weed out in the recruitment process, and even if they get past that they have a nice way of killing themselves off, as Gevlon is doing right now.

I think the saddest thing about Gevlon failing in EVE however is that he only did so on his blog. He never, well, did anything in EVE itself. He never got in that Titan to produce a good killmail. He never got a Corp off the ground far enough to have it implode for all to see. He never went into WH space. Never really went into Null. Just sat in a few stations, updated his market orders, and flew his frig around in high-sec.

Unlike SW:TOR, all that potential hilarious fail, wasted.

12 Comments | EVE Online, Inquisition Clan, MMO design, Rant, RMT, SW:TOR, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Atlantica Online is now super ‘accessible’

July 6, 2012

Atlantica Online is not the game it was when I played it back in late 2008. It’s still got the combat system, and graphics, and all of that. It still has the same initial quest structure, town system, pops up, etc. But the game today is insultingly easy, and not just in the usual ways.

Yes, the monsters you now face seem much easier. They don’t hit as hard, they die faster, and, most shockingly, it seem that when you face a group of 5-6, only one or two will attack you per turn. This not only makes the whole thing easier, but it’s just silly. Wtf is the point of grouping 5-6 mobs together if only one or two are going to actually act and attack you?

It gets worse though. You now receive a ‘help box’ as you play, first at level 5, then again at 15, and once more at 25 (have not made it higher). Each box contains a bunch of gear, generally much better than what you have found so far, along with some cash shop ‘samples’ (7 day devil wings for example). In other words, you not only get ‘welfare epics’ to use on super-easy mobs, but the game makes sure you ALWAYS (again up to 25 so far) have them.

Finally, the two boss encounters so far have been a total joke. What was once a rewarding and ‘gatekeeper’ fight is now the same faceroll as any random mob group. No real special abilities, no need to actually go in with a plan, no defeat-and-grind-up-a-bit wall; just enter, faceroll, leave.

The changes have really crippled AO for me so far, because when the game is this easy, all of the other things just don’t matter. Who cares about crafting or consumables or party setup when no matter what you do, you are going to win easily? The quests and locations also fade into just another spot, as you don’t really develop that respect for a boss, or that edge from a particularly tricky combination of mobs.

I’m hoping that all of this is a result of extending AO’s ‘intro’ into the first 25 or so levels, and that the challenge and battle complexity comes back (if anyone is playing currently please chime in). Since the level cap is now 150 (it was 100 back then), perhaps that’s what happened. I really hope so, because if not, ‘accessibility’ has claimed another MMO.

2 Comments | Atlantica Online, MMO design, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Day-one mastery

June 29, 2012

Keen has a nice post about why he is finding current-day MMOs lacking, especially in immersion. I think what Keen writes is something many (most?) MMO players feel, whether they actually know it or not. A major issue with MMOs cloning WoW is that today, everyone is already really good at WoW, and so a major chunk of ‘content’ (learning the game) is instantly missing from whatever AAA MMO you load up.

This is a major reason why, despite having access, I only played GW2 a tiny bit during the first BWE event; just enough to know the game was decent-enough to play with INQ and my wife. Because while GW2 is set to cure all MMO woes, it does so in very familiar fashion. You are still mashing a hotbar, you are still going from lower level zones to higher, still collecting ever-increasing gear, and you still have an end-game where you bash people/doors/npcs until… well until you are bored (or for a small subset, until your server sits at the top).

The details of all of the above is what will make GW2 interesting, and there will be some changes thrown in (ooh, dodge), but learning those will take minutes rather than years, and because this is a mass-market game, the learning will be terrible accessible and dummy-proof.

The ride itself will undoubtedly be pretty, it will have some ‘ooh neat’ moments, and the time spent with it will be entertaining. But I have absolutely no doubts that GW2 will not be immersive. It won’t be something that sucks you in and challenges you on that level for months if not years. It won’t be the land of unique MMO stories, where a year after release we are reading about how a small group of players just discovered a new way of doing… anyway. And all of that is 100% fine, so long as you go in with reasonable expectations. I fear many are not, but what can you do.

Back to the larger point; in the days of the big three, immersion worked not only because no one really knew this MMO thing, but because each game had little in common with the other two. Simply put UO did not play or work like EQ1 in any way, and what AC-DT was doing was also completely different. If you put UO next to EQ and added up the similarities, and did the same for WoW and GW2, which total would be higher? And by how much?

On top of this, figuring each game out took longer, mostly thanks to the games being less accessible and the ‘how this works’ never being officially explained. This lead to information being posted elsewhere, but at that time half of what you read was still wrong. Today not only can you get every system explained to you on one site, but that one site is almost certainly accurate. If today I want to know the absolute best build for a GW2 character, I’m only one Google search away.

As always, the current-day exception to this is EVE. The lack of accessibility in EVE means you are left to figure many things out either on your own or in your group. The wealth of options means that while you can master one aspect, there are dozens of unrelated things you know nothing about. A great null-sec pilot is a noob in WH space, for instance, and to truly become a master of everything not only requires a massive amount of time, it’s also very, very optional. You would have to force yourself to jump from area to area of the game frequently just to experience it all, and that’s not very realistic for a variety of reasons.

What EVE loses by those dropping off before the first month due to the complexity it makes up for (and then some) from those who are 4 year vets and still have things to learn. The PvP-based nature of EVE also means that not only will that 4 year vet have game systems to learn; he will constantly be adjusting his gameplay due to other players and shifting tactics.

It would be difficult for a new MMO to replicate the complexity and depth of EVE on launch day, simply because unlike WoW, EVE has actually been expanding (rather than replacing) its content over the years. But while it would be unrealistic to expect years of complexity on day one, more than a month is not asking too much, is it?

10 Comments | Asheron's Call, beta, EQ2, EVE Online, Guild Wars, Inquisition Clan, MMO design, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Out-voted

June 26, 2012

A box-only game is successful if people buy the box. How they feel about what’s inside the box after the sale is only important if you intend to start or maintain a franchise. If this is a one-off game, whether you sell a million copies because you created a great game or because you had a great marketing campaign does not matter; at the end of the day you sold a million copies.

The subscription model collects equal pay from everyone, and is successful when enough people continue to pay. The plus side for consumers is that if you sell a box and the content sucks, you are going to fail under the subscription model. The downside is that if 10k people REALLY like what you are doing, it’s still only 10k people and you most likely have failed (unless you aimed at 10k). The other factor here is that, for the most part, one sub is just as good as another, so the goal is to just get as many as possible.

The F2P model makes its money off a tiny subset of players, but those players end up paying far more than they would/could under other models. The model is successful if that subset buys and buys often, rather than how many people in general find your game interesting. You could have the world’s greatest game, but if the cash shop is a ghost town, you have failed as a F2P game.

I write the above (again) because, to me, gaming is going down a very dangerous trend in terms of ‘wallet votes’.

The first model is not perfect. Games could and do often sell on pure hype. How many terrible, terrible movie tie-in games have sold in the past for no reason other than having a trendy name on the box? And no matter how much you hate that Superman64 game, you still bought the box and effectively told the devs behind it “more please”.

On the other hand, positive word-of-mouth could lead to better sales, and high review scores ‘mattered’. While it still happened (ICO), overall good games sold well, and developers had solid reasons to make quality titles. A sad trend of “good original game, lots of crap after” happens, but hey, at least the original was worthwhile.

The sub model should be familiar to everyone here. The obvious advantage is that box hype won’t save crap (WAR), and solid titles can earn their teams far, far more money than just a single box sale. CCP is able to do what it does not because EVE is an amazing game for all, but because EVE is an amazing game for 100-200k people who pay CCP hundreds of dollars a year, every year, ‘forever’. Under the box model EVE would have long since shut down and been declared a massive failure, while WAR and SW:TOR would be considered great success stories.

The other big advantage here is that not only must a quality title be delivered, it must be maintained. If a year goes by and your MMO falls behind, or goes in a negative direction, players have a direct way to inform the company that they do not approve (unsub). Games that are well maintained and innovate while staying true to their core are rewarded, and as a player that is the ultimate win/win when it comes to the MMO genre.

The big downside, especially from a company perspective, is that each vote is limited to a set amount of money. Super fans can’t (reasonably) vote more by spending more, and if the core of your title has a somewhat limited market, your updates might only go as far as they need to in order to maintain, rather than push the boundaries aggressively to really make players extra happy.

F2P allows for that super fan vote. Or rather, it ONLY cares about the super fan vote. Left at just that, it should be the ideal model for true gamers, right? The more you and your niche love a title, the more successful you can make it while also getting more out of it.

Unfortunately reality does not align with theory. Current-day F2P games, for the most part, sell power (because power sells), and games that sell power become competitions of spending rather than of skill (or even time). By design, a game that sells power is inherently flawed IMO. The devs are too motivated to put walls in front of you that you can spend to climb over, or ‘encourage’ PvP to be determined by he who has the bigger wallet.

What really worries me is that, even if the above is accepted by most, it only takes a few to justify peddling F2P goods. 95% of people can recognize a poor game that sells power as something not worth paying for, but unlike the other two models, the 95% does not matter. If that 5% is buying, the game is a success. Furthermore, in order to KEEP that 5% spending, devs must keep giving them a reason to do so. If the 5% all already have the sword of $25 doom, then you better have the axe of $40 godslaying coming tomorrow, even if that axe drives away scores of the 95%. You never counted, so you leaving is a non-factor.

I’ll go one step further; I believe those who spend heavily in F2P games are generally dumb gamers. They are the types who want to level faster even if it means they burn out sooner. They are the ones who use god-mode codes even when god-mode just means you need to pay for another game sooner. They are the ones who read a walkthrough before playing a game, all while complaining about how easy and predictable everything is.

The crux of the problem is that now, with F2P, the dummy vote is the only vote that counts, and while long-term that might not be sustainable, long term and quarterly financial results don’t mix. If your favorite MMO shuts down because it sold one too many power items, you can bet that the company behind it has already reallocated resources to the “next big thing”, and the only ones really screwed are those who wanted to play the game that was originally pitched, pre-F2P ‘conversion’.

(Which is not to condemn F2P overall. F2P can be done right (LoL), and the results can be a massive win/win for players (more content) and devs (way more money than box or sub. But F2P done right is, as of today, sadly rare.)

24 Comments | EVE Online, League of Legends, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Random, Rant, RMT, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Bucket of rage

June 20, 2012

Random ranting incoming:

One ‘awesome’ feature does not an MMO make.

“TESO is a copy/paste puddle of fail, but feature X looks interesting”. A cute gimmick feature can make an iPhone game worth the buck and download. It won’t get people to subscribe to your MMO for years.

You know what feature separated Asheron’s Call from Ultima Online? Everything. Why was DAOC different from the previous big three MMOs? Because it was, from its roots to its end-game. Way too many MMOs today look identical in all aspects but one or two, and yet devs are surprised people are ‘burning out’ at an accelerated rate. Combine this with the MMO model being one of KEEPING people interested, rather than just GETTING them interested like a single-player game, and the failtrain is pulling into the station earlier and earlier these days. When people can write off your game after your first interview (SW:TOR , TESO), you might want to reconsider some things.

Three faction PvP is the new MMO cure-all.

Can we stop this already? Yes, after DAOC everyone was asking for three faction PvP instead of the two-sided stuff that WoW and its clones were doing. And yes, it’s sad that it’s 2012 and we are just now getting titles coming out that may have it. And yes, in general 3-sided PvP is better than two, but already the concept has been screwed and cheapened.

You know why factions worked in DAOC? Because you had ugly dwarves vs hippy elves vs asshat humans, and most people could identify with one side and hate what the other two represented. DAOC had three factions, who happen to fight over stuff. Hate keeps people logging in and bashing doors or space structures. Fact not opinion™.

It’s not “three faction” PvP if you take your only ‘faction’, split it evenly into three groups, and have them fight off in a corner and then come back to hug it out. If there is no buy-in or hatred, it won’t work long-term, and long-term is kinda the goal here.

Stop talking about your game years before its release.

If your release date can still be counted in years, stfu. If I can’t play your beta in a few weeks, I don’t care, and consider your title 100% vaporware. Feel free to prove me wrong, but do so quietly. Dominus, Copernicus, Embers of Cearus, DF2.0, the list goes on. Any intern with Google can create an awesome-looking list of MMO features. Before they deliver anything everyone is always convinced they not only know what previous titles did wrong, but how to fix it. And of course, come beta (if beta ever comes), we find out that 99% of what you said all these years can be summed up as “bears bears bears” and you just released a horrible version of WoW.

Bonus points to those who, after their MMO is shut down, continue to talk about how amazing their MMO was. If your game was worth a crap, it would not have been canned, but obviously whatever it was you were showing to those with money did not look nearly ‘awesome’ enough for anyone to throw you a few bucks.

Double bonus because no one can ever claim your ‘awesome’ feature was in fact trash, since you never made it far enough for anyone to see. Your e-rep is safe, yo!

Kickstarter.

Kickstarter is about as trendy right now as updating your Twitter or Facebook was yesterday. And while the general concept is cool (vote with your wallet), can we at least get projects that have SOMETHING completed before you ask for money? Like I’m pretty sure if I copy/pasted by “PvE MMO design” post into Kickstarter today, I’d have a million bucks tomorrow. And I could probably hit two million by copy/pasting some obscure MMOs art and making a ‘dev video’ talking about how my combat system is the most “fluid, lifelike, immersive” system ever, and how my housing/ship/war/econ/political system has the depth of a full-on sim title, all within a “massive, unique” world. STFU or start your beta.

In totally unrelated news, I finally finished my Baldur’s Gate 1 game, and having started BG2, I still can’t believe the same company behind those games made SW:TOR. It’s like Grey Goose releasing a new flavor called sewage water. Just disgusting.

Also BG1 is a better sandbox than most ‘sandbox’ titles today, but that’s another post.

25 Comments | Asheron's Call, beta, Combat Systems, Dark Age of Camelot, Darkfall Online, EVE Online, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO design, Random, Rant, SW:TOR, The Elder Scrolls Online, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

The early bashing of TESO, and what it might mean

June 18, 2012

I find the defensive nature of the Elder Scroll MMO devs interesting. The game is not close to release, no one has seen it in action, let alone played it, yet already ‘fans’ are objecting and raising complaints, and the devs are trying to settle the crowds. Not that I believe the criticism is not warranted, mind you, but when has an MMO been under this much fire this early?

To me this suggests two things. One is that more and more gamers are tired of WoW clones. ‘Vets’ of the genre have felt this way for some time now (2008 yo), yet sales of clones have been decent in recent years, indicating that how ‘vets’ felt was not representative of the majority. SW:TOR changes this in a major way. Yes, the game sold a good number of boxes for an average game, but SW:TOR was anything but average in terms of project cost and hype. That SW:TOR only peaked at 1.7m is telling, and its rapid decline, supplemented by EA’s dismissal of the game being ‘important’ to the company, only hammer this home.

The second consideration is that the average MMO gamer seems to be moving back to the roots of the genre, albeit slowly. GW2 is no UO in terms of sandbox design, but many of its features are directly intended to move it away from WoW, rather than evolve it, and fans have responded to this approach. When TESO proudly announces that it’s WoW but ‘better’, it’s notable that many today see this as a major problem rather than something to cheer.

It will be interesting to see if an MMO comes along that strikes the right design balance of MMO longevity with casual ‘accessibility’. I believe WoW had that during its initial run, if somewhat imperfectly, but no game has come close since. Most have been far too ‘accessibly’, with gamers facerolling for a month or so and leaving bored. Others have achieved the longevity aspects, but at the price of excluding all but the most dedicated. As the genre escaped the flawed shadow of current-day WoW, I’m fairly confided such a title will come along.

When is the billion dollar question.

And sadly, it certainly sounds like TESO is not that title.

22 Comments | beta, MMO design, Random, SW:TOR, The Elder Scrolls Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

My favorite genre is coming back!

May 30, 2012

MMOs are a niche genre in gaming. They are games that require additional ‘work’ beyond just loading something up, and to really get the most out of them you have to put in that ‘work’ consistently. They can also be very expensive or absurdly cheap depending on how much you play, and overall the barrier of entry and when the game ‘clicks’ is far longer than most other genres.

In 1997 Ultima Online came out and did far better than anyone expected. Stronger than expected sales, plus the ability to collect money after the initial sale in the form of a subscription, meant a LOT of money was being made from an unexpected source. Those with the ability jumped in as soon as they could, and most games did well if not very well (EQ1) in the MMO niche. You had to try really hard (AO) to screw up an MMO, and even if you did you still survived.

Then in 2004 WoW came out and suddenly a niche genre was flooded. Some called them tourists, others believed the genre had finally ‘made it’. Most importantly, Blizzard was printing money faster than anyone else, regardless of the genre. No matter how awesome Madden X was, after EA got your $60, that was it, and that always somewhat limited the earning potential of games. Not so for MMOs, and with WoW subscriptions toping 10m, the market was no longer collecting $15 a month from a niche crowd.

If UO encouraged others to give the genre a shot, WoW basically forced companies to do it. WoW’s profits made all other genres of gaming seem inept, and hey, how hard could this MMO thing be anyway? Grab an IP, toss a bunch of cash at it, and bam, 10m people throwing $15 a month at you forever!

A few problems.

The first being that 2004 WoW is not the version of WoW being cloned. WoW 04-06 built the foundation for the juggernaut, and the mistakes of WotLK and especially Cata were not realized until recently. The reason? MMOs snowball. Once you have a certain number of people playing, it’s difficult to piss them all off fast enough to boot them all out instantly. Even when you try (NGE), it still might not work.

The second issue is that for most, WoW was their first MMO. You always like your first MMO more because hey, it’s all new to you. That newness only happens once, and even if you perfectly clone the correct version of WoW, you can’t replicate your game being someone’s first MMO. This aspect can’t be underestimated, both for initial impressions and retention.

So you have MMO ‘noob devs’ cloning the wrong version of WoW, and not only that, but you have a fan base that is rather confused. True MMO players hate casual themepark games because they are MMO-lite, while the millions that made WoW such a huge hit say they are looking for more WoW, but time and time again they move on much faster than the previous title; and in a space where retention and collecting $15 a month is king, that’s an issue.

Is it really that surprising that AAA themeparks have sold well and retained so poorly?

The reason I take such pleasure in watching SW:TOR fail is because that game is the very definition of the above, only magnified to such an extreme that even the most casual observers are coming to the correct conclusions (mostly). And if the casuals get it, at some point devs and publishers will as well.

The truth is that the MMO genre is not dying. Not even close. MMOs like EVE or Rift are doing well. MMO-lite titles like SW:TOR and current-day WoW are not. This is very good news for MMO players, who for years have seen the vast majority of resources wasted on AAA themepark failures. Yes, not all of the money will flow into real MMOs, but we don’t need all of it. Just some, and some will most definitely find the right people due to the fact that real MMOs are making money. It’s hundreds of thousands of subs money rather than millions, but the MMO genre never contained millions of players. Just a solid core, and a whole lot of tourists mucking everything up.

In a year from now the story won’t be that the MMO genre is dead. Actually there won’t be a story because who writes about niche stuff anyway? But outside of the spotlight, we will be talking about some pretty cool upcoming games, and how EVE continues to be awesome, and how Rift is still getting content added like crazy, and how GW2 (maybe) feels so fresh and yet so familiar. That will be nice.

PS: It’s tough to judge 38 Studios in the above. If Copernicus was yet another WoW-clone (it sure looked like one), then the studio closing down was just an acceleration of the inevitable. If the game truly was an EQ1-clone, it’s a sad loss and further reason to shake an angry fist at management.

39 Comments | Darkfall Online, EQ2, EVE Online, Guild Wars, Mass Media, MMO design, Rant, Rift, SW:TOR, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Forget the rest of the noise, the real advice new bloggers need

May 25, 2012

Have dreams of running a kind-of-a-big-deal blog with awesome amounts of traffic and comments? Here’s how!

1: Blog about the hottest MMO currently out or in the peak of its hype cycle. WoW, SW:TOR (before it died), and most certainly GW2 right now are great examples. Niche MMOs = niche blogs, don’t waste your time.

2: Keep the blog entry short. Most readers don’t have time to read long entries, and long entries will also cause issue with some of the items below.

3: Keep the topic positive, and easy to understand. Offending people drives them away, and most don’t care/understand complex topics. There is a reason WoW dungeons can be finished in 15 minutes by facerolling; do the same for your blog if you want to make it big.

4: Use pictures. They are easy to understand and allow someone to ‘read’ an entry in just a few seconds. Think of pictures like welfare epics; if you want to keep people happy, you need to give them shinies. Don’t worry about whether the post needs a picture or not, even if it adds zero value, a popular meme gif will make people feel like they ‘get it’.

5: Make it easy to comment. Complex topics that require previous knowledge are hard to comment on, and will drive people away. Everyone can tell you their favorite race or starting zone, it will only take them a few seconds, and they will feel like they are contributing.

That’s it. Follow those five simple steps and you too will soon see massive traffic and have a thriving ‘community’ of fans.

(Granted, the above will get you a soulless generic blog with no real lasting value that only entertains the lowest common denominator, but TMZ is not winning humanitarian awards either, and they get tons of traffic/comments!

Plus niching blogging is hard, yo.)

29 Comments | Blogroll, Mass Media, Rant, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

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