Thoughts about MMORPG

Just thoughts about MMORPG.

Author: ElendilasX

yay true.

@ElendilasX: Well, I hate to say it, but you really don't know anything about how things work.  I suspect you're too young to have actually worked in a business before, so let me help you out a little.

Before I go further, let me say that I'm a Senior Software Engineer and Team Lead for a very large corporation.  We don't write games, but we do several releases of software every year for large corporate customers.  I know something about how this works, and it's the same all around, whether or not the end result is a game or a commerce website.

The days of two guys in a basement writing DOOM are long gone.  The games you play are written by companies, and companies have business processes and priorities.  The "devs" you're talking about report to team leads, the team leads report to product or project managers, and those managers report to upper management.  (There are designers in there somewhere, too, but for the sake of simplicity we'll lump them with the product managers.  I haven't even mentioned the artists and sound engineers.)  While the feedback you provide in the form of bug reports and suggestions isn't ignored, it is tempered against the business plans and goals for the individual game, and the company as a whole.

Bugs, unless they render the game completely unplayable (and those won't get out the door, usually), will always be subordinated to planned feature releases.  Planned feature releases will always trump suggestions from the user community, if only because these games are very complex, and new features can't just be added overnight.

In some cases what the players suggest will affect game balance in a negative way.  In some cases, the suggestions simply don't mesh with the available technology.  In some cases, once reviewed from a mature perspective, the ideas are just plain bad.  Often player ideas aren't in line with the business goals for the product.

Bugs are treated the same way--if the game is still playable, they'll be pushed down the priority list.  Minor bug fixes don't draw in new players, or lead to player retention, all other things being equal.  New feature releases draw in new players and create player retention.  It's that simple.  New players and player retention equal revenue; bug fixes don't.   Revenue is good.  It keeps the company in business, and a company in business keeps the game going.

The "devs" you write about are at the bottom of the food chain.  They may want to fix this bug, or add that feature.  Unfortunately, they don't get to pick and choose what they want to do.  They have to follow the development plan that comes from the product or project manager, and they have to meet schedules as defined by uppper management.  If they don't want to do that, they get to go work somewhere else, because lots of other people are depending on their work being done on time.  (The artists and sound engineers I mentioned earlier, for example.)

This is what happens in the real world. You might as well get used to it.  It's not going to change any time soon.

(It wouldn't hurt reconsider your position in the universe, too.  It appears you believe that the companies should be acting on your whims at the snap of a finger, and that won't ever happen, anywhere, unless you happen to own the company.  Even then, it would be bad.)

people are stupid thats why they never listen to suggestions

mrprogguy - shouldnt main goal of all gaming companies be to keep people entertained, so getting subscriptions and money? So they should at least listen to them. Maybe they do but it really dont reflects in games. I think it is reason for so many gaming failing.

For your last comment about me, you are wrong, I really dont want anything to happen at my snap of a finger, world is already boring to me.

If we talk about ignorance, WAR is very good example, there was (maybe there still it is) nonsense about items, lvl20 items better then lvl40, fighter get uselles bonus like ranged attack etc. How long it was (is?) in game, month? Another example is in AoC: (i dont play anymore so there can be some mistakes) there was Villas quest`s, i repeated some of them almost till end, then you droped it and could go clear that Villa once again, they fixed such bug only in few weeks, thats way too long for such bugs to allow exist, because exploiting such bug you could lvl few times faster, and at lvls with no quests you could have lvl up XX times faster..

Dont say that these games failure so it is no surprise, because it JUST example.

I dont know I mean in my experience it would seem that smaller company's and dev teams seem to listen and care about there fans more. But I think huge wealthy companys like Blizzard for example have forgotten what it should be all about - a great enjoyable experience and not the money.

 I think that everyone's here is really twisted and divided by what is ideal and what's practical.  Companies will lure players in with the ideal game concepts, but in reality they must weigh change and development on the scale of what's profitable.  Then again since companies lure players in with the ideal, they try to create extremely well-developed concepts, they just don't always work.  The current mmorpgs are the ones that can lure in players and remain profitable.  So, an idealist company isn't necessarily profitable, and so that's why so many mmorgps tank.... or I could go saying nothing important...

  I agree with the OP to an extent.  Some developers listen to the player base, but most of them (especially the successful ones like WoW, which doesn't need to change) don't listen to their fan base.