Last week at the Austin Game Developer's Conference, Jeff Strain, a co-founder of ArenaNet, gave a talk about how to make a successful MMO. The Guild Wars official site has been updated with highlights from that speech.

Don't be fooled by the much-hyped success of the top MMOs on the market. The game industry is littered with the carnage of MMOs that have failed over the past few years. Due largely to the social nature of MMOs, gamers rarely commit to more than one or two MMOs at a time. This is in contrast to the traditional game market, in which there is room for many games to be successful, even within the same genre. You may play ten different action games this year, but you are very unlikely to play more than one or two MMOs. This means that it is not enough to make a great game - instead you must make a game that is so overwhelmingly superior that it can actively break apart an established community and bring that community to your game. In today's market, that is a tall order.

Regardless of the business model, the primary factor that determines whether an MMO lives or dies is the size of its active player base. There appears to be a tipping point at around 150,000 players. MMOs that reach this critical mass within a few months of release tend to continue to grow and thrive, and those that do not tend to shrink and ultimately die. The majority of MMOs that are released into the market never reach this threshold.

Read more here.

I'm impressed. By far the best article I've ever read on that subject. If I were a developer it would become a stickie on my pinboard.

One point he didn't talk about or which was left out in that highlights of the speech is the localisation. I loved it that I had the english descriptions on the button so I could name things and trade things with people all over the world.

I can't tell you American readers how important that feature was for worldwide success, when I think about how lousy the localisation of EQ2 was in the first half year, well I don't even have the words to give you a rough sceme, but it made me quit after half a year. I always laugh when I read that EQ2 isn't that successfull on Asian markets due to gameplay, mouse, keys, atmosphere or whatever. 

It's mandatory in a mmo that you have access to all the english words and the Guild Wars system is by far the best in that regard up to now. It's more mandatory than the localisation itself, a game could go without atleast in Europe even though if you charge money it is expected to translate quest texts but it's not important for stuff. Nobody cares if he can "read a sword". You can type it in the chat to sell without knowing what it means or copy and paste. So you get the Wöfgä-sword. Trouble wielding it? Never risk troubles in your database for the sake of translation especially if you encorporate crafting.

PLEASE do not try to translate fantasy names in foreign languages. If you have an npc named Gordon Lightgiver then the german name is Gordon Lightgiver and only that. If you start to open a dictionary on that name you'll have a big laugh because we understand the fantasy implication without problem but we don't have the naming concept.

To give you an example, a superman in german is a Supermann, it means great guy. But if you write the comic hero with double n you have a spelling mistake and nothing else. Nobody ever would connect a Supermann with the man of steel. Not even in speech because the sound of the "a" is completely different. 

Heh, Starcraft and Sacrifice...

For a long time I've just been wondering WHY there haven't been any new games this Decade that were as perfectly balanced as those 2 were.  The only thing that came close recently was Guildwars.   Finally seeing how they're all connected by this article really makes me appreciate the ArenaNet team and does indeed give me hope for the future.