|| The 'K'asual Pa's'ifist ||
x% contains MMORPGs' related rants and opinions while the remainder x% are subjects left open as food for thoughts. No.. there's no % left for discussions, you can do that OFF my blog and in the forums. Ugly please :)

<DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT a WoW fanboi! I have learned that for some things in life, you don't have to like some to respect some...End>

I read through Gamasutra's coverage of AGDC with this piece of the same title for this entry that I had borrowed, for my sudden temp loss from coming up with an original one =p.Gordon Walton, the co-studio director at BioWare Austin, summarized 12 'lessons' learned from WoW's massive success and where and how to apply those said lessons to prepare for imminent post-WoW's phase for new MMOs' creative and for profit initiative challenges ahead.

    IMO...There's a few hits and misses in Gordy's rundown through the list and as I attempt to highlight a few of those (edited for a better read), please clarify with the supplied link above to avoid confusion. Coming from a Bioware guy, it's still filled with perilous uncertainties.

Lesson 1
...although Blizzard were not experts in the genre -- in fact, the company had never shipped an MMO before -- Blizzard learned well from the genre's past. Essentially, Walton posited that taking a critical look at your genre rather than being a fan or having experience developing it is of utmost importance.

    The 1st lesson is pretty cut and dry in the rawest of terms. The usual "don't fix if it ain't broke" approach. It makes adequate sense from a business standpoint, but what if we're dealing to cater out to masses unfamiliar with a product? Holding on to a genre's tested and proven securities, guarantees the fast and short term returns but what of the longer term when it's time to innovate?

    Some clear lines needs to be drawn between sticking to what works best from the same tact being made as an excuse or an allowance to be complacent in disregarding or rejecting genre evolution?

    The arguments gets even messier if we're talking about genres that had span an average of 5 years to date? Future relevance? Has anyone found that Holy Grail-like genre to rule them all already? (oh and spare those LoTRo sniggers please, honestly that wasn't what I had in mind here..)

    Whatever happened to that "Winners takes chances!" motivational war cry?

Lesson 2
According to Walton, another success of WOW was Blizzard's insistence on keeping system specs low. He railed against developers' addiction to high-powered gaming PCs -- asking the crowd how many replace their rigs every year, every two years, every three. He noted that regular people simply don't replace their boxes that often, and that "there's a lot more real humans than there are us."

"This is not about getting some more customers -- this the opportunity to get lots more. Like 4-10x more. There is maybe one game a year that drives hardware sales... they get a lot of hype, but look at their numbers. How much do they sell?"

    Let's be clear about a few things here...The last thing I'd ever strive to do is to take an anti-tech stance when it comes to gaming and MMOs in general,as I'm a part time PC enthusiast myself. But having said that, it just means that I'm well aware of the intricately thorny relationships between the OS of choice for gaming (Windows..what else?) and its inclusion of DirectX (DX) APIs in shaping and forcing GPU makers to follow suit, along with platform abiding game developers.

    OK Ultima Online is still here (post Trammel or not). Runescape is still here. Ragnarok Online is one most widely emulated title for private servers available today. And all 3 shares the same trait for post-WoW MMO generation's 1st reaction...that they're all (in choice leet speak) butt fugly to look at. And yet they're all still here? Why?.........because GAME PLAY is GAME PLAY is GAME PLAY = God of atheists! (ok I went overboard here, give a guy a break will ya?)

    For a rough analogy, if anyone's familiar with that pornstar Tera Patrick. Well just imagine an 'improved ' version of her (just how do we do that is beyond me to say the least); more toned, agile, same blessings of naturally well endowed physical attributess BUT with the SAME old, lousy missionary position as the only trick that she can do? Just because that's the best, tried, tested and proven trick that made her as the bona fide star in all of her career, so all she needs is just seasonal makeovers? Makes you wanna pay for a new adult PPV or try out new fetishes right?

    Vanguard is a prime example of what can (and already have..) go wrong if design philosophies are rushed with graphics and visual extravaganzas on top of the list over core game contents and bug fixes. It's a complete pain in my eyes to have read numerous random accounts from even users with 3.0ghz clock speed CPUs, GeForce 8 class GPUs and above 2gb of RAM who had ran into craptacular headaches to eke out 50-60 frame rates in towns? Absurd is definitely an understatement...

Lesson 3
"Quality counts." This one was interesting because it sounds so obvious, but as Walton pointed out, in the MMO world... it's not quite the case. "What was consistent about every MMO pre-WoW is that they were buggy as sh*t. They were rough. Even if they were fun, they were rough. They all launched with hundreds, if not thousands, of known bugs. Everyone basically ran out of money and launched their games."

He continued, ">>>>What's the biggest mistake? What everybody did without exception -- shoving it out the door." He admitted that he was guilty of doing the same thing in the past (we can thus infer that BioWare will not in the future.)

    I got nothing more to add to this, as it's pretty obvious that these days 'oversights' like this are being packaged and delivered as patches/updates and even expansions. Conveniently to work charms on the player pop as thinly veiled PR stunts or "We care about you! We work round the clock to bring this update for you!" BS. Kinda like the way Microsoft treats 'full releases' of Windows until service packs comes kind of thing.

    And sadly enough, when a title can't be saved for some parts or simply out of creative juice for solutions, nerf more can?

Lesson 4
One thing that WoW is frequently recognized for is its solo play. Walton's fourth lesson was: support this, because gamers want it.

    I'm getting mixed signals here as solo play on standalone definition in most MMOs are pretty much straightforward. Most hardcores won't even mind to grind with apathetic anti social behaviors thrown into that mix. The rest of the player types would still adhere to sub par lore play through quests.

    If anything, I think WoW only had managed to mask over the reverse psychological effects by facilitating "less than noticeable grind" feel from quests in execution.

    Obviously the current hot topics of sandbox and dynamic contents here in mmorpg.com sounds more relevant than ever to especially tackle this aspect.

Lesson 5
The next point was another design tip, and became mildly convoluted (like the issue it tackled, ironically.) "Simplify the damn GUI!" Walton exhorted. "MMOs have the worst and most complex GUIs because we have so much sh*t you can do in the game. We want to give players all that stuff!" He judged WoW's interface to be "as simple as it can possibly be and as fun as it can possibly be." An audience member correctly added "...but no simpler."

    I think it's more accurate that most of us wants customizable and fully functional UIs rather than straight up simplicity of forms. UIs are 2nd base to me (don't know about you guys..) if or when default ctrls, movements and free keys' remaps are fluidly done.

    Although with that being said, I agree that more can be done to reduce system side textual craps that most of us can really do without.

Lesson 6
Moving on, Walton wryly noted, "Content sucks. Content takes people to build. You can build systems, but systems suck because we pattern match 'em real quick. Content is custom-crafted things for people to do." He described the concept of the "player horizon" -- a player should not perceive all that she can do from the beginning of the game: something tantalizing has to hang out of reach. "If I can visualize everything that will happen to me by the end by level 3, the game's over."

    Finally! A dude from a big name game company sees that.Structured or pre-meditated contents are on its way out. We need that sense of unpredictable excitement to come back.Enough said..

    What's weird is..he actually seen this done in WoW or am I missing something here o_O?

Lesson 7
Another sticking point for many designers (and gamers) is PVP content. Walton thinks strong PVP is essential. He also offered up this thought: besides the core PVP gamers, "a certain percentage of people [who exist] don't know that they want to compete once they have some mastery." But from a developer standpoint, "it's hard to balance PVP and PVE together."

    Ok now this is just funky and I'm a little lost here since Gordy's using WoW as the reference point. Strong PvP? I think it's more accurate to say that WoW encourages 'accessible' PvP not strong at the base of that criteria.

    I'll be damned if he thinks that WoW's brand of PvP is the way forward for the rest of post-WoW titles?

Lesson 8
"Don't tune for the hardcore."

"I was thinking about crazy people! Crazy people can finish the game in 50 days, but crazy people are not who we should be thinking about.... where's the real market, our real customers? If anything, I think people should make games that level faster than WoW -- that have the right content to hold up."

    I can predict that spears are being shaken right now along with clenched fists and ready to throw Molotov cocktails abound for his lack of subtleties when he said those words out.

    I'm casual myself but I think it's only fair to lose the typical hardcores' stereotyping. I think it's more along the lines of harnessing replay values than to outrightly disregard hardcores, are the more favorable approach in this area. It's starkly different actually.

    The fear from us right now is the notion that WoW style of carebearizations spells out 'CASUAL (wrongly perceived to mere lowered game difficulties?)' + 'REPLAY VALUES' = success?

    Gordy must have missed his meds when he arrived to this part of his talk obviously...

Lesson 9
"City Of Heroes taught me this before WoW -- a game that you finished and felt good and you'd re-up." But with other games "they quit because they'd stayed too long... the only way for them to escape was to demonize the game."

    Replay values...No more no less...Oddly enough, I think there's more ex-TBC refugees in more f2p titles I've seen, even before this latest expansion had came out and they never went back? But evidently, they're that minority that didn't make the 9mill cut admittedly. Still...you can't help but ask about the real statistics of recurring subbers vs. new entrants from the 9mill pie in this matter?

Lesson 10
Walton discussed an issue that comes up in many games -- and one that generated a little debate in the audience. Suggesting you should direct your players' experience of the game, he asked, "Are you Disneyland or are you a sandbox?" Noting "the interesting thing about sandbox games is that they tend to have a ton more griefing" he suggested "an accessible game is directed. You never leave them in a place where they go 'what do I do next?' The vast majority of customers -- particularly when you get out of the hardcore -- need the signposts."

    I went like "What the fuck...!?" at this when I had done reading and was left a tad disillusioned. Gordy made a COMPLETE U-turn from 'Lesson 6' at non-structured directions? He touched on availability of options for players and the 'qualities' of EVERY option. To add to the confusion, I'll quote;

"a common developer mistake is to give people good choice, bad choice, medium choice. They need to all be good choices. People want to feel like things are complex, but they don't really want them complex. You have to give them the illusion of complexity but keep it super-simple."

    I'm hoping that Gordy was referring to balancing ease of play against a well thought out risks/rewards/implications from choices made, not about subscribing to watered down challenges?

    Bleah..now he's having second thoughts...I left out Lesson 11 since it's largely a continuation of the above and lesson 12 is pretty much self explanatory.

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Conclusions:-

1.   I've been careful to shape my comments as neutral as possible and with equal amounts of weariness towards this talk delivered by a rep of the industry (or as some would have it...'The Man'). It seems like WoW still casts that lingering effect on rival competitors to STILL copy some if not more cues from it, instead of motivating them in taking bolder chances and try uncharted pursuits of innovations.

2.    It's fine if the industry takes the littlest and most basic charms of WoW to emulate, but to take too much examples out as the new MMO 'designs for 9mill success' Holy Writ?...We're all doomed to get back to square 1. The industry needs to realize that it's illogical for each and every dev/publisher to score a constant x mill and growing future subbers' count? Success need not be on subbers' counts at peak highs? Success needs to include longevity with good and even spread of sustainable player bases.

    Business = profits = money..To which any of the lowest IQed advanced primates we call idiots knew about already and no one's arguing with that. But to insult the intelligence of the revenue source; US the players with the same plays from an overused and spit on play book is just whacked....

    Let's just hope that these 'lessons' wasn't meant to be as an on-going prep course for the next 5 years for devs/publishers to get things right.

    I'll convert to consoles if I can foresee that to happen >=O!!!