Developers Corner

Tell me what you think - Make sure to hit the poll.

I've spent years wandering between MMO's with pretty much the same problems. In WoW I never got past the first 20 levels because by the time that I got to that point the story line had so completely dropped off that there was very little guidence for me to follow or interest to keep me leveling.I played Anarchy Online, but I had the same problem. The player community was far too high leveled and the lower level characters were either non-english speaking or were higher level players on an alternate playing around with a test build and 9/10 times would never log back on to that character in the time I kept them on my friends list.

I think the process of wiping should be brought back or implimented in some of the older games or those in developement. Or maybe just specific servers for new games. Such as the ladders in Diablo 2. There should be a subsequencial wipe of characters every so often to keep games that have been out for a long time at a fresh pace with ever evolving communities and players. Or a fresh wipe to include / change the story line to make the "ump-teenth" time through more interesting with a new line of quests to complete toward end game. When new content is added to a game, some should be added to the middle every now and then to reshape the story or give a different way to get to end game and of course not be available to end game characters (level caps on the quests or items) as to get more players to start new characters to experience the middle game rewards or quests. This would keep from the lower end of the game from becoming barren after a few months/years. This would also reduce the number of "newbie" players that go without guidance until the player gives up on the game due to no guidance toward end game/higher levels as well as add new developement or changes to the end game rather than keep pushing for new things only at the high levels which if I guess correctly, nearly 30% of all players in MMO's never see.

Think of how successful a game would be if the middle end is what grew instead of just the end game. People leveling slow would have more content to deal with as well as new goals without needing to grind to the end to experience something new. Whether it be a new cooler looking set of gear with nearly the same stats as the gear they have, or whether it be a new mount  that is better looking vs a mount that is faster. Something to change up their current status in the middle game to help excite them to keep leveling.

This is just an idea. I'd like to know what you guys think as developers, if this is even possible or just a dumb idea. Again, I'm just another gamer in the midst of all of this. =^)

-Timberwolf

Wiping a character in an MMOG is like deleting a save game file in any SP game.

It's a waste of time.

Why not just add new content and NOT wipe everyone's progress? It's foolish to believe that the player's effort is worth nothing.

SWG pulled a maneuver similar to what you are suggesting (known as the NGE): the whole game was revamped and everyone's character was reset. You can see the results yourself: all the veterans left, but the few newbies who join now and then are somewhat content. From 400K subscriptions to less than 20K.

Bad idea, sorry.

Whoa.. Good reply.. I should have clearified in my post, I didn't mean to actually wipe the characters (as in deleting their names/classes), only to reset them to their starting stats and clear any items. However, consider the game you're using as an example. SWG has a HUGE grind time. Nearly double or in some cases triple that of some of the current MMO's. As many players like that, it's good for the game. However, if you started a character on a server that was expected to wipe and gave a warning that periodic wipes were done on that server or in that game, you would not complain when it came to be.

I would never make a person recreate any of their chracters. If that were the case, there would be a chance of losing the names of your characters as well as housing/status and so forth. Now, with that out of the way... Compare the leveling grind time of SWG vs some of the other games out like WoW or even EQ2. You're talking almost a year worth of difference if not more for a casual gamer. In WoW the average time to level a character to end game is less than 2 weeks for a casual gamer in a good party or maybe 5 weeks if you're using one of the soloable classes and doing most everything alone. Even in the more popular grind driven games like EQ2, you're still only talking a few months to get to end game. Not much time to the average gamer.

Now, the example that you use is sorta a bad example as well. First off, a revamp of a game is a problem in itself. That's not what I'm suggesting as a change. Changing the entire aspect and play style of a game that's been around for a long time is not only a bad idea, but a game killing prospect. Secondly, when SoE decided to do their wipe, they were taking years of people's play time away. I'm not talking years before resets. I'm talking 6 months, maybe 7 at the most and the option of it not being all servers. Putting in a year of effort is pointless if it's taken away, but with current character times in a lot of games being so short now, 6-7 months is not unreasonable for most of the game to reach end game and view a large ammount of the end game. And I'm not suggesting that ALL servers be reset, maybe just some where people want the constant revolving effort as a server wide concept of partying to acheive end game faster and keep a revolving player base.

So, let me use the most recent example of such a problem which would be WoW. WoW's community is mainly players between 55-70. Now, every now and then you'll find higher level players using their alternates, however, the problem you run into is that with alternates, they are rarely played. Then even if you add the person's main character, if you met their alt playing at 25-30, you have to maintain a relation between yourself and that person until you gain another 30-40 levels just to be able to play with them again if they decide not to put in a lot of effort into their alternate. And find me a server that has a large ammount of new players that's been out for more than a year. You won't. That's why I came up with this concept to have an ever evolving rotation of player levels to keep from killing off the prospect of new customer basis, or players just due to lack of low to middle end game parties which in games like WoW is almost a nessesity unless you play one or two of the soloable classes. This means that in WoW nearly 70% or more of each server is at end game. So that leaves the other 30% being people who only casually play, are in middle game or are alternates. So, what kind of new player is going to get very far in a party based game like WoW if most of the parties are scarce to start, flimsy and you can never find anything close to a perma-party.

This is why the community ends up mostly elitist, very unhelpful and in most cases only interested in those that they can play end game with.

Like I say, just an idea. =^)

-Timberwolf