Why MxO Live Content Worked
In a response to a recent Staff Blog post by MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood titled "Crushing the Dream of Live Content," former Matrix Online Live Events Team member Rachel Thompson shares her views on why MxO Live Content worked.
Editorial By Guest Writer on July 27, 2009
There are a number of obstacles to creating successful live events in massively multiplayer games. This does not mean that live events are impossible. I was a member of the Live Events team that ran large scale live events in The Matrix Online. We ran one-off side events as well as grand efforts that moved the overall story of the game forward. I will admit that the setting and format of The Matrix Online made it particularly well suited to a regular schedule of live events, as it was designed to have an ongoing storyline. However, I think that our team's methods would work in any game. Had The Matrix Online enjoyed the commercial success Monolith and Warner Brothers had hoped for I might very well still be there, entertaining people.
To pull off a large scale event that entertains more than a handful of people, you need to do some serious planning. The MxO Live Events Team (commonly referred to as the LET) had a regular development cycle: a planning stage where we roughed out the idea for the next event and assigned tasks, completion of those tasks, executing the event, followed by a debriefing to review what worked and what didn't so we could avoid any obvious mistakes in the next cycle. It did not take "ungodly amounts of time to design, plan, and execute" live events. It usually took somewhere in the realm of three to six weeks, depending on the scale of the event in question.
There are times when no matter how well you plan, events will take a tangent. Live interaction with players is the whole point, so flexibility is key. We adopted a method of scripting known as "talking points". Essentially, there was a list of information that absolutely had to be communicated during certain appearances, but no set dialog. This allowed each of us, in our role as "digital actors", to deliver the content organically while responding to the players present for the event.
So during the event design cycle our tasks included everything from writing talking points and messages for the community to creating necessary characters, scheduling to provide content on all servers within a reasonable amount of time, acquiring code assets and art from the game team, and reaching out to fansites or media outlets to enhance the live event experience.
;)
In order to involve as many players as possible we used every tool at our disposal to provide information and special content. For example, during the week-long "Nightfall" event I wrote a series of short fiction pieces that were posted to the official MxO website. They provided insight into the actions of the main characters during the event, gave hints as to where the Primary Characters (movie characters: Morpheus, Niobe, The Merovingian, etc) and Secondary Characters (created by the LET to support the main story and provide a secondary ongoing storyline) might be making their next appearance, or what kind of challenge they might present to the players. We used an in-game organization-based communication system to provide different information to each of the three game organizations in order to drive competition and conflict between them. Fansites and fan-based internet radio stations worked with us to disseminate information.
Of course there were still obstacles. It took a great deal of convincing to gain the resources for even a small Live Events program, though after the first few events proved to be popular with the players we were able to double the size of our team . . . to eight. That was just enough staff to make events manageable on a game with only nine servers. During our first major story-related event we made the mistake of concentrating too many players in one area, creating incredible lag. The LET was seated at one end of the "GM Grotto", and our Technical Operations department was on the second floor with a balcony that looked down into our room. I distinctly recall hearing shouted curses floating down from above during that event as they tried to keep the servers from crashing. We quickly devised ways to break up the crowd and promised never to do that again.
Scheduling multiple characters on multiple servers during hours that worked for the majority of our players, especially as two servers were designated for European players, was challenging. In some cases we worked twelve or fourteen hour days, and the overtime really adds up after a while. During the major story event in which we killed Morpheus (oops, is that still considered a spoiler?) the entire team worked fourteen hours a day for ten days straight. It was simply what we had to do in order to present the live content.
;)
Were we "fair" to our players? Well, I can say we always did our best to provide content to as many players as possible and find alternate ways for people to participate if they couldn't make a scheduled event. We ran unscheduled once-off events whenever time allowed. The Primary Characters were made available for player events given adequate notice and a decent reason to attend. Persephone once attended a player-run fashion show, while Niobe attended a meeting between three Zion factions to help facilitate an alliance.
Were there still complaints about bias? Of course. If the Zion organization won an event, the Machine and Merovingian organizations were up in arms about someone cheating. When The Merovingian held a party at Club Hell, we were accused of favoring that organization. This is just human nature, and we accepted it as such. That may seem like a bleak view of the gaming public, but you have to admit that complaints of bias on the part of the devs are common in games that don't even have live events. In those cases the complaints are about the balancing of classes and gear, new spells, new areas, or anything else that could possibly be considered unfair to someone. You simply can't afford thin skin in this industry.
For a live events program to really work, we need a paradigm shift in massively multiplayer games. Over the years developers have realized that these games are not "fire and forget" projects. They must be supported, bugs must be fixed, and there must be regular infusions of new content if you want subscribers to continue playing. If only we could push this realization one step further, to viewing live events as an integral part of the massively multiplayer experience. Not as an extra, or as a replacement for static content, but as a complement to it. Giving the players a richer and more rewarding experience can only encourage people to play more and stay longer, and that can only do good things for a game's bottom line regardless of the resources needed to support a Live Events Team.
Amazing article with some great insight. Couldn't agree with you more. The future success of this genre is tied into the ability to bring MORE live gaming to the players. Static just won't cut it.
I'm posting a link to this on the forum of the game I'm beta testing now. I hope they take heed. And I hope Ms. Thompson has found work on another events team somewhere.
Again...great read.
And I agree wholeheartedly. Live events are what made me a fan of Ultima Online for the rest of my life. It's a shame more companies don't take that path. They just kind of throw the content out there and let people do it...over and over and over again... the exact same way. Get some edge, man!
It is a shame about the live events being removed from MxO. I still believe that SOE made a very big mistake with that decision that ultimately lead to D-Day on the 31st. The thing that was nice about the live events was the feeling that you were a integral part of the story. It never really felt scripted and with the Hunt for Morpheus event there was interaction even out of the game. I remember chasing the Assassin around finally sending him a PM telling him how I was going to hunt him down and kill him. All the sudden outta nowhere he appears and well got to see a lot of the loading area that night. The point is that the live events had their stability problems but it was something that people looked forward to...
My character never seemed to be high-enough level to participate in the big live events, but I recall breaking news to my faction of the exact location of an Unlimit assault, and directing traffic from the nearest hardline to get as many players into the fray as possible.
I loved the parties in-game (OMG do the Vixens throw a GOOD party!) - and having LESIG / LET characters attending parties, having fun with the Effectuator changing our RSI around.
I particularly enjoyed the one-off small story events --- Tick-Tock talking about the moment of New Years, when time in the Matrix ticks back a year to keep everything a virtual 1999.
Collecting code fragments (and selling them for huge profits!) during the Blue Sky event, and the follow-on in-game concerts was fun.
And did I mention all the player-run "parties" with live DJs ... I know of no other game with such a great social scene! (Club Succubus or Theoria's apartment FTW) - thanks to the devs for all the Cake Vendors at the Vixens parties!
Rachel does a great job of discussing what really made MxO great -- and at the same time is why so many of us left after SOE's buyout. The LET especially made MxO the most immersive mmo I've ever played. My favorite memory is still of a party I threw to celebrate acquiring my last access node key -- with surprise attendance by Vashuo and several other characters acted by the LET. They partied with us for a few hours, and even joined the group I took with me to swipe the last node.
That party and their surprise appearance made Vashuo's eventual murder by one of the very crew members that also attended the party a defining event in the game for my character and many of my friends' as well.
MxO without the LET there had simply no comparison to MxO with the LET, and if more games would recognize the power of such events they'd have far better commercial success, I believe.
Thank you Rachel for giving us insight into the making of one of the greatest aspects of MxO -- and why we'll always miss what it could have been (versus what SOE made of it).
/dap
/bow
This thread should be advertised world wide to all developpers so they can understand why Events are important and why it's necessary to have the tools to do them. If some of you played Dungeon and Dragons Online in 2007 on the EU server owned by Codemasters I'm pretty sure you'll remember lives event there as well. Not having the impact those in MxO had because it was made by the GM team and didn't had all the dev team behind them to do so but they still made quite awesome stuff with what they had.
But now a day, devs are dropping the ball and doesn't take the time to put what is needed in. Ask on new games today about GMs being able to do specific thing and most of the time, the answer will be, we don't have the tools for it. Which is sad really.
So I say, spread the word, and get companies to read this, make more comments on this story and be heard!
As one of the guys on Monolith's dev team who worked on MxO, I just want to thank Rachel for her defense of MxO's live events. In my opinion (as a low-level QA grunt at the time), live events and an ongoing story were two of MxO's best features. I wish we could have been more successful in the marketplace, and maybe those would have become more relevant parts of newer MMOs.
But that's a whole different set of war stories for another day.
Thanks Rachel, and I hope you're successful in whatever bit of game development you may have gone into since the MxO days.
The LET team gave me the uniquest game expierence ever. Every MMO I played (I pretty much tried them all), they all get boring. The LET wasn't online 24/7 but when an event began it was going to be epic because you knew something was going to happen that would never happen again. MMO's miss that content and I think this is as much part of MMO's just as any form of gameplay and content. Live events truly differ MMO's from other genres, giving unique content and sometimes not even for all the players. And that's important for players to feel as if they matter; when they know their input might have influence on the outcome of the event.
By reading this article how relatively easy live events were done I think it's the next step in MMO industry to get this to the full potential.
It's a shame the engine of MXO never really could support the events. Sometimes the lag was horrible and I don't think the LET had all the tools they'd require. But the interactive city and the events happening, there's no game who could top that expierence.
I snuck into that Merovingian bar and had a blast trying to get out of it during that event...wrong place wrong time kinda thing lol...live events make all the difference for sure....
In SWG i had attended at least 6 live events including the original story arcs on the Kauri server (even those were all scripted) they made the story so much better and the world much more immersive to play in....
later on I helped take down a Dark Jedi attacking the Dantooine outpost, An attack of Night Sisters that we had to hold off...the Droideka attack on Naboo...the grand ball at the palace...the Destruction of that city on naboo (can't recall the name)...that was a total blast seeing all of those Imperial troops land and we were totally in the heat of a real star wars battle...
awesome stuff......
That was a nice article, but from what she describes it seems like there was a TON of work involved in putting on a live event. 6 weeks? 14 hour days? 8 staff members? Really, that seems like a lot for a one time event. I can't imagine this being done again by a company (which is too bad because I've never experienced a live event in an MMO).
The live events in Anarchy Online that the devs and such put on were one of the myriad of reasons I fell in love with that game. I still remember being cornered by a reporter for the in game newspaper put out by Funcom and answering a few questions about currents happenings on Rubi-Ka.
I think what she means is that in 6 weeks they can have a chapter full of live events. I think anyone can imagine it doesn't take 6 weeks to pull of an event of a few hours.
Great article a enjoyable insightful read.
Having played the MxO although not enjoying the game I did really really enjoy the live events i attended they where always well executed and moved along niceley.
SWG in its infancy also had a fantastic live events team but that gradually got pushed more and more onto the players shoulders which was all fine and dandy when the players recieved the support required but then that began to fade also.
MxO was an amazing game because of the live events.
I still remember trying to find clues about The Assassin, me and a group of friends went all over the place looking for stuff. Especially when Morpheus appeared and "spawned" Neo's coded body in a flying pose while at least 75 people or so stood and watched as someone on the dev team spoke as Morpheus.
The awesome live radio/DJ in-game while everyone (including the DJ) danced in the same club together and talked. (I'm not an RPer, it was more of just a social thing for the level 50s). The community in the game was the best I've ever seen as well.
/end fanboy rant
I really wish Monolith would've stuck with it, they could've made MxO an absolutely amazing game. Unfortunately, SOE took over and destroyed another MMO yet again.
Actually, cryptic is planning on addressing this in champions online. They've said that they have systems in place for GMs to directly take control of bosses or NPCs for different encounters, and that they are looking at doing live events and (when they have time) having GMs actually ride shotgun on raid bosses and stuff to make the encounters more interesting and dynamic.
Awesome article - and we see one of these, with such insights, perhaps once a year!
I wish I could have played MxO during those times...
Fantastic article, yet another shining example of why MxO was a great MMO.
I played MxO for over a year and i left just after the LET and LESIG disappeared, the game became a bit of an empty shell and all the "Buzz" had kinda gone.
I've yet to find another game with an events team that could get more bodies online in a single day for one event than some online games could muster in a week, the reason that RP, LET and player driven content worked so well was the setting, The Matrix was made for ongoing storylines and huge shocks that made players an integral part of the plot.
I'll go now as i can see the rest of my post going into Fanboy Rant mode.