There is a gem from Gordon Walton:

"When he first encountered WoW, he admits thinking that the game would be over in 50 days -- because it's so fast paced. But when its success became apparent, Walton realized something. "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."

Lol first of all...........finishing WoW in 50 days???

In 50 days you might just level cap (now it takes less than a month)........but  I guess the guy never considered the end game important, that's why SWTOR has virtually none.

Leveling in WOW is just the appetizer, the real meat is the end game,

MMOs should level faster?

Ok..........,so  I leveled my Juggernat in 3 weeks, then I realised that there was no end game and I quit SWTOR before the first month was up.

That's the kind of result you were aiming for Mr. Walton?

MMO industry must have plenty of geniuses like him.................sadly

Originally posted by ste2000

Originally posted by Karteli

Originally posted by ste2000
 

Your experiences are your own, can you give citation examples here?  Saying in 20/20 hindsight that someone wasn't any good is about as good as guessing the lottery numbers.  You see where this is, elaborate pls?

I don't need to elaborate every single point, since it is quite long,

The general feeling I had is that he had the MMO players and the WoW players in particular, completely wrong.

His view was that WoW players are casual players (many developers think so), my view is that WoW players are quite hardcore, that's why every developer is getting it so wrong and could no replicate WOW success.

They are designing MMOs for the wrong crowd IMO.

I played WoW for 4 years after playing EQ and EQ2 for 6 years, and players didn't looked any less hardcore than EQ players.

Since Walton bases all his theory on WoW players as being casuals, he gets everything wrong from there, and goes on describing a MMO with zero challenges, and so watered down so to make everyone an instant winner.

Matt Firor is making the same mistakes as Gordon Walton, by thinking MMO players want the "I WIN" button, therefore designing the game to achieve the kind of result.

But this is not the case.

In fact players do want to win (who doesn't), but they don't like to be spoon feeded all the way, they like the challenge of achieving a determinate goal, they don't want to beat the game in 2 weeks, and certainly they won't like a game where everyone and their dog achieve the same exact results as them.

While the leveling can be fairly casual (particularly with the latests expansions), WoW end game is as hardcore as you can get.

"If everyone wins, everyone lose" (That's a motto I just created but I believe for MMOs is quite appropriate), and that's the opposite view of Walton, Mark Jacobs (Warhammer) and Matt Firor who all thinks that by giving everyone the same price everyone will be happy and will keep playing their lovely MMOs

 

This is actually basic psychology.

Would you take part in a race where everyone gets the first prize?

Of course not, you compete to beat others, to achieve more than others........... if everyone come first where is the fun?

Would you bother to take part in the next race if you knew that no matter how much effort you put in it, everyone wins (Which basically means there is no real winner)?

The same can be applied to gaming and MMO in particular.........and this is where they are getting it wrong.

 

You've described the type of player that I see myself as while summarizing my own feelings on the matter, but I will say that there is certainly a non-trivial element in the MMO audience who really would rather everybody win; presumably because they know that they wouldn't finish first or second or third or so on if reward were dictated by time and effort.  All you have to do is go to major WoW hangouts and see how many people saying current WoW is better than vanilla-TBC WoW ... there are A LOT more than one would think.

Since gaming became a popular passtime there has also been a huge element of players in single-player games that use cheat codes and mods to help them level up and get weapons and abilities that enable them to faceroll through games.   I think the underlying principles are actually very similar.

Eh, both the articles linked in this thread seem predominantly like good game design theory.

But execution matters; TOR wasn't  "easy to learn but difficult to master".  It was just easy to learn.  That was the problem: every fight played out exactly the same becaues there wasn't enough to learn and master.

Really the only thing I disagreed with in either article was "don't tune for the hardcore".  MMORPGs continually think they can get away with one-size-fits-all difficulty tuning, which results in skilled players being bored with the early game and casual players finding endgame impossible, when in fact both types of players should be able to find their sweet spot of difficulty through every phase of the game.  You know...like all the lessons we learned in the previous 30+ years of game design where now just about every game (except MMORPGs) lets players select a difficulty?

Originally posted by ste2000

I just remembered few years ago an interesting lesson by the ex General Manager of Bioware Austin and daddy of SWTOR, Gordon Walton.

He was giving a lesson on how to build the post WOW MMOs and indirectly describing how Bioware future MMO (SWTOR) should look like in order to be a successful game.

Incidentally, by reading it, I was thinking to myself, "This guy hasn't got a clue", but he was the professional, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Looking at how SWTOR turned out, I must say my first gut instinct was right after all.

I am mentioning this guy because, recently I came across another person that sounds a lot like Gordon Walton and gave me the same unconfortable feelings.

This guy is non other than Zenimax Online studio director Matt Firor.

The way he talks and what he says reminded me a lot about Gordon Walton and his pompous lessons on how to make a successful MMO.

Reading and watching Matt interviews describing what TESO is going to look like, I often went "WTF" or "What is he talking about", and came to the conclusion tha Mr. Firor lost touch with the MMO community and doesn't know how to make a MMO anymore (He was one of DAOC creator together with Mark Jacobs who then developed Warhammer Online)

I am really worried that Matt Firor could follow Gordon Walton and his theory,  and screws the TES IP, like Walton screwed KOTOR Online.

 

Anyway if you want to learn how to make a succcessfull MMORPG like SWTOR here is a link with the useful lesson (/sarcasm):

>>> Gordon Walton MMO lesson - Sept 2007

Enjoy yourselves............and please take notes

Just by having the courage to (a) create a three realm mmorpg (b) not copy paste the classes between each realm (c) create unique races between each realm (other than various human types) and (d) Notforcing players to co pve in the game and instead letting us get a feel of our own faction and culture so we truly do feel "different" than our enemies and get a real US vs THEM vs THEM feeling - something NO mmorpg other than DAOC has ever offered and finally (e) upgrading Dark Age of Camelot's infamous RvR pvp style, means Mr. Firor is already doing something that literally no one is doing.

I love Secret World - having a blast, but everyone looks pretty much the same and the animations and abillities are pretty much all same same.  Yes there are a number of possibilities, but the fault of classless class systems is that people still create a trinity of classes (tank, healer, dps).  The other issue I have with TSW is that the factions kill each other in pvp - yet they group in PVE.  Again, with the lazy lore.  But meh, I don't really call TSW a true mmorpg anyway.  It is good enough, however, to be enjoyable. 

I would have played GW2 but they didn't even get up to the quality of Secret World and just blatantly copy pasted the handful of races across the pvp worlds at let folks have at it.  That's lazy developing to me - but then again, I always said GW2 was a video game and not an mmorpg (as in not an in depth online RPG, rather, more a fast food product).

I loathed SW:ToR and knew what its fate would be. 

So I will support any truly three faction project, such as TSW, but I cannot count the days until I get to participate with TESO, since not a single mmo company has done anything that has matched Dark Age of Camelot (in regards to depth, factions, races, and classes).

Originally posted by jiveturkey12

"He suggested that too many choices are paralyzing. If a player sees 10, he thinks, "I can make nine bad choices!" According to studies Walton has read about the human mind, "If you want people to do well, give them two, no more than four choices."

 

This part had me in pure amazement, I cant believe this guy was in anyform of power for any company. The guy apparently "Studied the human mind" and all he got was that limiting choice is BETTER?!

 

Let Corporate MMO's Burn and lets bring on the new wave of indie talent. Ill wait patiently rather than playing any of this trash.

 

We need more Young Mcquaids, and less old Waltons.

Thats actually true.

Studies show that people perform best if presented with limited choices (like he mentioned 2-4).

His problem lied in the interpretation, thinking that "performance" is an issue in a leisure activity.

Not to mention you can build amazing complexity from binary choice, as demonstrated by many games.

He mistook "limited choice" as "non-complex", which is extremely amateurish on his part.

I've been thinking about this lately and one of my conclusions is that the biggest difference between the 'old' games and the current crop is mostly one of pacing.

Combat has consistently gotten more and more action oriented and faster, travel is faster, levelling is faster...every element of the game is faster...but not development. None of them seem to see the link between pace of content consumption and customer retention...or with fast pace games having no time for socialization leading to no community which adds to poor player retention.

Now don't get me wrong, I think there is a huge (and hugely profitable) market out there for vaguely persistant, action games with the instanced/queue mechanisms so common now...but MMOs used to be about worlds...and if some one wants to have that again they are going to have to either

Slow down the pacing of everything in the game...I think the original EQ with updated graphics, UI and social features but otherwise the same level of difficulty/grind would be a significant niche success today

-or-

Manage the leap to actual meaningful 'sim' level world interactions and player generated content; the devs don't have to stay ahead of the players because they have coded a system of processes where the players own actions/interactions alter the world and generate more to do/react to.

Damn it, wish I have read that before I bought the game. Meh, left it anyway. At least it all makes sense after reading all that.

Good lord, how out of touch can one man be?

"Multi choice is bad"

"MMOs should be faster"

"Make a single player MMO" (Granted at first I didn't view it as such, but boy was I wrong)

And my favorite, "Being a fan and having experiance isn't as important as looking at the genre"

The guy's a damn nut.

Originally posted by ste2000

Enjoy yourselves............and please take notes

At first I found myself agreeing with his points: low specs are important, quality/polish is important, solo play is important.  But then I found myself feeling more uncomfortable,

A game has two lives - one is the first week impression, yes.  However, the other is the slowly building word of mouth.  If you focus too much on launch day, you set yourself up for a great couple of months and then drifting off.

He didn't understand procedural gameplay - it's not about randomizing names, it's about focusing content creation on what matters and leaving the wash of texture to randomization.

A couple of his points are essentially the sandbox-vs-themepark culture fork.  There isn't an objective right or wrong answer here. 

PvP: I don't disagree, but the reason I opted not to apply for the beta a couple of years before launch was that when I loaded the application page it had a big red-vs-blue logo and that immediately turned me off.  PvP as a selling point is a double-edged sword.  Too much emphasis on it will drive away non-PvPers.

The problem with the hardcore is that they also tend to be the most vocal.  You might not be aiming at them as your target audience, but they have a disproportionate voice in the word of mouth and so can't be ignored.

If you see your audience as transient and content as static, what is the point of the illusion of a permanent world?

The problem with "easy to learn, difficult to master" games is that I don't know of any examples that were consciously (and successfully) created this way.  It's a property that just sometimes randomly happens - when it does, you run with it.

Brands matter in the first week (and SW:TOR definitely did benefit from the accumulated goodwill Bioware had built up plus the Star Wars logo) .  After that, it's your responsibility to be your own brand.

So let me go back to his lesson one: Blizzard didn't know what they were doing when they created WoW.  My read of that first point is you need to look at that both ways: for every rookie publisher that hits a home run, there were a lot of veteran publishers who didn't. 

( disclaimer: I have not yet played SW:TOR and so have no opinion on whether I consider it an artistic success or failure; I'm just reacting to reading the article posted )

Originally posted by ericbelser

 

None of them seem to see the link between pace of content consumption and customer retention...

I agree.  If content can be consumed in 50 days, expect no more than 2 months retention.  Having multiple content paths helps because it encourages rolling alts to see the other content.

Worst case scenerio is single race, single starting zone, one path for content, and quickly consumed content.

Another aspect is payment model...

If they want to make MMO SP games, they should at least have the sense to not charge subscriptions.

Originally posted by ste2000

I just remembered few years ago an interesting lesson by the ex General Manager of Bioware Austin and daddy of SWTOR, Gordon Walton.

He was giving a lesson on how to build the post WOW MMOs and indirectly describing how Bioware future MMO (SWTOR) should look like in order to be a successful game.

Incidentally, by reading it, I was thinking to myself, "This guy hasn't got a clue", but he was the professional, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Looking at how SWTOR turned out, I must say my first gut instinct was right after all.

I am mentioning this guy because, recently I came across another person that sounds a lot like Gordon Walton and gave me the same unconfortable feelings.

This guy is non other than Zenimax Online studio director Matt Firor.

The way he talks and what he says reminded me a lot about Gordon Walton and his pompous lessons on how to make a successful MMO.

Reading and watching Matt interviews describing what TESO is going to look like, I often went "WTF" or "What is he talking about", and came to the conclusion tha Mr. Firor lost touch with the MMO community and doesn't know how to make a MMO anymore (He was one of DAOC creator together with Mark Jacobs who then developed Warhammer Online)

I am really worried that Matt Firor could follow Gordon Walton and his theory,  and screws the TES IP, like Walton screwed KOTOR Online.

 

Anyway if you want to learn how to make a succcessfull MMORPG like SWTOR here is a link with the useful lesson (/sarcasm):

>>> Gordon Walton MMO lesson - Sept 2007

Enjoy yourselves............and please take notes

It's still enjoyed by 500K plus gamers, doesn't sound like the total flop you wierdos keep spewing on the bulletin boards.

Originally posted by Karteli

Your experiences are your own, can you give citation examples here?  Saying in 20/20 hindsight that someone wasn't any good is about as good as guessing the lottery numbers.

Guessing the lottery numbers the next Saturday is amazingly easy.

Well a lot of what he says in that "lecture" is true on a bare bones level. The problem is that the execution have to focus on the illusion part, if you make the game vary solo-friendly you still have to give the illusion that it is not. (WoW and TSW does this very well,) SWToR did sort of miss the mark on that as it pretty much told you that grouping will be something you only do when forced to and even then you only do it with a s few people as you can.

Another thing SW:ToR did not really get in the flurry of gushing over WoW is that the world of warcraft have a really big world that give you the illusion that you are in a world. This is something that SWtor could never do as it takes place on several worlds and there is simply not enough time to fullt flesh out 10or some such worlds as each of them would be about the size of at least one continent of azeroth. This is why people keep calling it a "lobby" game i think as the actually play area is limited.

But all in all the points he raise are thing that a developer alway should have in the back of their head.

As for TES:O... .. . It could be the next Ultima Online... But i highly doubt it, to be honest UO is the only RPG franchise that have made it over to MMO without burning... And to be honest the competition was not all that stiff back then. I do think MMO's thould stay away from taking SP RPG's and trying to make MMO's of them.

Originally posted by tawess

 to be honest UO is the only RPG franchise that have made it over to MMO without burning... And to be honest the competition was not all that stiff back then. I do think MMO's thould stay away from taking SP RPG's and trying to make MMO's of them.

Final Fantasy XI did well enough too

especially for a game that orginally launched on PS2 (2002) then later came to PCs (2003)

Originally posted by SpottyGekko

Interesting view back in time, lol

 

But according to Walton "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."

 

Yup, everybody wins, all the time. There should only be good consequences, regardless of what the player does, etc.

 

The most depressing part of it all is that he was mostly correct on all points. It was a fine analysis of what made WoW appeal to the masses.

He doesn't mean that "everybody wins" ... He means what every developer should know is that you should strive to make every choice viable because giving the choice between a good option and a bad one is really no choice at all.

What he says sorta works, but it is only as good as the illusion. And once the illusion is broken you can never piece it back together again.

Originally posted by Korusus

Originally posted by 3-4thElf

I have to say I don't really care for any of the dev talk coming from TESO and it's like they're already making excuses for 90% of the game being like other MMORPGs.

When the very first article about the game quotes the devs as saying they aren't implementing a feature (in this case, player housing) because it would be "too hard" you know the game is dead in the water.  Not because of no player housing...but the part where they can't even come up with a decent excuse or even justify it as "not in the vision".

  Just...nope, too hard so we're not gonna.

Try something new and implement an MMO in keeping with the Elder Scrolls tradition?  Nope...easier to just make it like every other fantasy MMO ever made, maybe throw in some story which is the new in thing to do.

I agree that the Devs are failing right out of the gate with TESO. It almost sounds to me like they don't even want to make it... like it was a "decision from the top" instead of a project the Devs have been wanting to do.

This is why I have said in other posts that I didn't want to see TESO made... because I no longer believe Dev Teams want to really make anything good like a high quality and immersive MMO, just Android Apps and Facebook games.

Originally posted by SpottyGekko

Interesting view back in time, lol

But according to Walton "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."

 Yup, everybody wins, all the time. There should only be good consequences, regardless of what the player does, etc. 

The most depressing part of it all is that he was mostly correct on all points. It was a fine analysis of what made WoW appeal to the masses.

Find a MMORPG where one class is blatantly stronger than the other, and one of its abilities is blatantly so powerful that you never use anything but that ability.

How long do you think the game will be interesting if you only have one class choice and just spam one button forever?

Originally posted by MMOarQQ

Ahh yes, "embrace solo play".

Now I see what happened.

The only problem is they are late to the game. Every one already has that feature. Now you have to have solo-content just to be competitive. It does not stand out any more.

beginning to imagine TESO as a fairly complex tax writeoff

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by MMOarQQ

Ahh yes, "embrace solo play".

Now I see what happened.

The only problem is they are late to the game. Every one already has that feature. Now you have to have solo-content just to be competitive. It does not stand out any more.

 It's funny because I remember when having solo content was actually a relevant issue.

Back in the EQ days, some classes literally COULD NOT solo.  You would have to be in a group all the time to level up, and it was frankly a pain.  So when WoW came out, and every class could solo, it was great!

The problem today is that developers seemed to have forgotten what players originally wanted back in the EQ days.  They wanted the option to solo, but what we get now is almost a mandate to solo.  No EQ player would have preferred that EQ change the game so that grouping is very frequently not preferable...but that seems to be what a lot of game devs are doing.

Look at SWTOR for example.  I think that it's safe to say that the majority of the game's work went into the storylines and quesitng.  But the fact of the matter is that, that stuff is almost all solo crap!  You can try to do it with a group, but it's really a pain, and it's almost always to your benefit to just solo it.

In the end, developers should realize that designing a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER game to be almost all solo content sounds ridiculous...and it is.

Lesson Four

One thing that WoW is frequently recognized for is its solo play. Walton's fourth lesson was: support this, because gamers want it. According to Walton, older games that forced players into groups missed the point: "[the] truth is that people soloed every game to the best they could and when they couldn't anymore, they quit. Embracing solo play that was a true innovation for WoW."

I'll never understand why anyone thinks this is a good idea. I just don't see the point in a completely single player oriented experience in a game that is otherwise entirely multiplayer. Being able to watch other players bunny hop past you down the road and watching a chatbox full of trolls isn't really the greatest reason to turn something into an MMO.

If you are going to do that, why not just make a massive single player game that doesn't have the limitations or cost of an MMO? Just look at games like Elder Scrolls/Gothic/Two worlds/Divinity/etc, which offer large worlds with hundreds of quests that are actually interesting and complex. TOR could've potentially been a great single player game along with the rest of the KoToR series if they had just kept it as a single player game and stuck with much more interesting gameplay mechanics.