Garrett Fuller: Putting An MMO Out Of Its Misery
In this week's column, Garrett Fuller discusses the life and easy death of MMOs in the current marketplace.
Column By Garrett Fuller on August 26, 2009
The life cycle of development for an MMO is risky. Game developers, publishers, and investors can look at the rewards all they want with years of revenue and subscriptions stretching out into the future, yet they have to build the game first. MMOs have a strange existence in the world. Developers secretly build them over with years of work. Marketing teams look to push announcements to build hype around the game and develop a following of fans and players to show to investors or publishers. Players get excited with years of announcements and hype surrounding the launch of their favorite IP as an MMO. Then... the cookie crumbles. The MMO is launched to the world with a sink or swim approach. Many MMOs die, but not every MMO gets to really live. Let's try to discover when development is too much and the game does not live up to the hype. Or even worse, when a game has lost its fun and should just go away.
Tabula Rasa is our first example, NCSoft's futuristic exciting dive into Richard Garriott's world that was going to push the boundries of game play and MMO story. People may forget that the development of Tabula Rasa took a long time. Many major changes were done to the game because the original design was almost too far removed. Musical Instruments as weapons, anime style avatars that wore clothing which Jean Paul Gauttier would even question... if you have never seen the screenshots of this world try searching them out. Fortunately, Tabula Rasa's team realized this growing problem and changed the look and feel of the game to more closely resemble Starship Troopers. The game kept its core elements, like collecting the symbols for your tablet, using symbols that could cross language barriers even here on Earth, and fighting aliens. The problem was that all these great ideas took time. They did sound great and even looked cool, but in the end the players did not come along for this new journey. Tabula Rasa closed shortly after launch.
Our next example is a game that still exists today, but was heavily impacted by changes which the developers thought were for the better, but ended up being much worse on the player side. You guessed it...Star Wars Galaxies! Star Wars Galaxies, in the beginning, was a complex game. Skills and systems were in place that made players work hard for their achievements and gear. Cracking the code to become a Jedi was next to impossible. Players had their work cut out for them, yet, the community was solid and devoted to the game. The game makers then decided to work in some changes for players to dare I say, make things easier with the Combat Upgrade and New Game Experience. The result was alienating their existing player base in favor of trying to draw in a new one. Players who went through this process still speak with anger about how they were treated. The lesson here is, if you want to make changes, take into account the fact that your paying customers first. Star Wars Galaxies still is alive today and players can still log into the game with all of its changes, however with The Old Republic on the horizon, just how much life does this game have left in it? I hear Spare cleaning out his shotgun.
So we have seen huge plans go to ruin with the launch of a game and a game lost its player base due to a huge change after production. Our next example will show the survival factor by looking at Ultima Online. For many, this was the original MMO. Yes there were MUDs and other games, but UO made the leap to the somewhat mainstream for the genre. The game is coming up on its twelve year anniversary and it is still alive today. The original game has changed a lot, it has even changed companies. Yet the community remains and still logs in to play in the open world. Perhaps part of the longevity of this game, and a game like EVE Online, is the open world factor. Many MMOs have gotten away from that design, but these two games prove that it does have some staying power over the long term. Here is a world, make your own fun. I must confess that Ultima is one of the few games I have truly role-played in with the Bloodclan Orcs guild. It was a blast speaking in Orc all the time and following their style. The open world format in Ultima Online has driven its long life into almost teenage years. The game is still profitable and the community remains loyal, some MMOs would love to have that level of success.
Any developer, manager, or business development person will tell you MMOs are a tough genre to handle. You have to balance a long development lifecycle, marketing strategies, and investments before you can even launch the game. Perhaps the recent push of MMOs with major IPs has fallen into the trap set by the word epic. Do you know that word? We hear it a lot in the MMO industry. It must be EPIC! Well epic takes time, epic takes money, and sometimes players are overwhelmed by the epic factor of just how much work they will have to put into a game. Many gamers I talk to always say they would play an MMO, they just don't want to do the work. While hardcore MMO players will say, if you cannot compete, don't play. Who sets this expectation? I think the fault lies on the game makers. If and when you set the expectations too high in the areas of hype, storyline, EPIC game play, etc. you give your players a reason to be disappointed in the result when the expectations are either too high or too low. This is the balancing act. MMOs that cannot balance these expectations with players in mind should quite honestly be put out of their misery.
In closing, I often wonder if game developers ask the question in meetings, is this fun? MMOs that die, die for a reason. I truly believe it is because there is a huge lack of fun in the game. Something just did not jive with the players and that was it, game over. Perhaps before investors spend money, marketing plots the hype, and developers start designing endless code for a game, the game makers should ask that simple question: Will this be fun, Or should we put this idea out of its misery from the get go and save people a lot of time and money? Games are recreation for many people, if they are not fun, do not make them. If you make them like a job, people will eventually quit and find a better one. The story of the MMO industry is a good one to study for anyone wanting to develop video games. There are triumphs and losses, while some losses limp on into the next decade, others have been put out of their misery.
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they could certainly start by putting the NGE out of its misery.
I just bought a brand new 20 gauge shotgun I was going to do some duck hunting with soon. When Spare (no Idea who this is but Garret does) decides to put a round or two into SWG(NGE) I want in on that action. Closure is a good thing, right?
When can we put WoW out of its misery??
Part of the problem with WoW's battleground PVP has been the enormous amount of honor/tokens you have to grind to get anything useful. It's even worse when your faction never wins. This leads to people botting their character or getting frustrated and quitting. Replaying the same content over and over becomes drudgery and then it feels like work.
Once you get to max level, you really don't have all that much you can do solo or as a small group, except grind honor or daily quests. The inventor of the daily quest should be drawn and quartered.
And that makes 4 very public negative critiques of SWG in one month! Where was all this anti-NGE speak years ago?
While not a bad read, I would have hoped for something with a bit more... bite. This entry is basically a better-worded long forum post of the kind that we have seen a lot in recent months and years. Why not list a few candidates? Why not go out on a limb and say in your opinion, which hopefully is somewhat informed, Game X and Y should die, while Game Z would have deserved to live? Which MMOs were killed by marketing, which by bad design, which were cut short in the last months, released too early, or forced a late change of direction?
Your 2 examples are sound, but there plenty more. There are also several different reasons why MMOs get killed off.
I think this topic has a lot more to offer yet.
When Star Wars: The Old Republic comes out, it will be the last nail in SWG's coffin. So in about a year or so, the NGE will be out of its misery.
Not going to happen for a long time. Blizzard is making more money from it than some small nation states have. Just so long as it keeps raking in millions and millions of dollars, its not going anywhere. Nor should it. Its a good game up to level cap.
As for the NGE...Please don't get me started on that...
It is now pretty save to critique SWG by a MMO news website since you are not going to offend many fans and SOE is not going to retaliate.
If on the other hand they were to write a scathing expose on AoC, WAR or a newcomer like Aion, they would offend the fans of those games and the companies publishing them might not be as fortcomming with previews, interviews or other perks.
It is now pretty save to critique SWG by a MMO news website since you are not going to offend many fans and SOE is not going to retaliate.
If on the other hand they were to write a scathing expose on AoC, WAR or a newcomer like Aion, they would offend the fans of those games and the companies publishing them might not be as fortcomming with previews, interviews or other perks.
You said it. I didn't ;-)
Wow I couldn't agree with you more. No matter how good the story or graphics are the one main question is does it all come together to make the game FUN. Are the players being entertained at every step of the way in their MMO world so that they never want to leave or do they have to do so many tedious and time consuming tasks that it becomes a choir to play. Make a truly fun MMO and you will literally have millions of players returning again and again, but make one that looks good or sounds good and has very little fun as a result of its complexity or design then you will see subscribers coming and going never to return.
It's the truth that so many publishers/developers seem to just not get. I was a game developers conference a few months ago, and there was a lecture by some high up marketing/research fellow who literally thought he had the equation for fun! Turned out the guy was giving us the equation for what perceived as the 'metacritic code', which many game execs see as the holy grail.
He was off his rocker btw. These people should stop looking at metacritic numbers and start reading the reviews which give the numbers weight. But yet, PLAY SOME F***ING GAMES! But I digress.
btw, the equation was something along the lines of 'x feature + y feature + z IP X better graphics = fun!'. He never mentioned releasing bug free code or polishing a game. Booo! Yes, these are the people making your games.
Here's some early shots and an article of Garriot's vision of Tabula Rasa. It was certainly changed!
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/tabula-rasa/512497p4.html
Are you stoned? You surely sound like it. Oh wait - I know... you failed at trolling. I get it.
Why else would someone suggest that a game with over 10 million CURRENT subscriptions should be put out of its "misery". Where, until recently, an estimated 3% of a countries ECONOMY is based off of selling items in the game world.
Seriously though, you're right. The misery of a game that makes about $150,000,000 A MONTH, is in horrible misery. Damn, just close the servers and delete the databases.. it's a horrible travestiy...
I hope nge dies...if the combat update goes away i might go back to it...
It's the truth that so many publishers/developers seem to just not get. I was a game developers conference a few months ago, and there was a lecture by some high up marketing/research fellow who literally thought he had the equation for fun! Turned out the guy was giving us the equation for what perceived as the 'metacritic code', which many game execs see as the holy grail.
He was off his rocker btw. These people should stop looking at metacritic numbers and start reading the reviews which give the numbers weight. But yet, PLAY SOME F***ING GAMES! But I digress.
btw, the equation was something along the lines of 'x feature + y feature + z IP X better graphics = fun!'. He never mentioned releasing bug free code or polishing a game. Booo! Yes, these are the people making your games.
Ahh yes. Fun.
The danger here is that you can take the whole concept too far. MMOs are interesting things and often what makes an MMO fun is a combination of elements including elements that are not fun by themselves.
As an example of the concept I like to use Silent Hunter III. It's not an MMO but it does demonstrate the point.
Travel in SH III involves physically sailing from port to your patrol grid and back again. Even with time compression this can take ages (hours). Boring stuff. Only it isn't. Because there is tension. Every time you see a ship, or get a sonar contact, or see an air craft there are choices to be made and the very real possibility that a wrong choice could spell "GAME OVER".
They could have designed the game to 'warp' you to your patrol zone and back again. But if they had done that the game would have lost something that gave the player a sense of attachment to his boat and his crew. So a boring element becomes 'fun' or at least contributes to it in a meaningful way.
Back to MMOs (one that should probably be on the list already and one that is sure to join if it is ever released)
PotBS and The Agency.
Pre release for PotBS I saw a video interview with one of the FLS devs (can't find the link now).
For that entire interview he rabbited on about "FUN!"
"We ditched this because it wasn't fun...", "...couldn't find a way to make it fun..." etc etc.
Right then I knew the game was in trouble.
Yes, they stripped out stuff that wasn't fun, and in doing so somewhere along the way they stripped out the game's soul.
What was left was a shell of an MMO that people just don't want to play.
The Agency is the same. Again I saw a video interview and saw the same idotic focus on "Fun, fun, FUN!"
Yes, this approach might work for a console game, but MMOs are a whole different style of game.
Sometimes it's the 'non-fun' elements that allow the fun elements to even work.
So the pursuit of fun can be a double edged sword.
I think investors should also acknowledge the time it takes to make a good MMO, rather than rushing a product out when "deadlines are coming up" just to see if they can get a return on their investment. They should see by now that a polished game has a greater chance of success than an unpolished game. As BloodNinja has said, "You can't rush good pizza" (if pizza was an MMO?) I don't know I felt like referring to BloodNinja since I been rereading his stuff lately. lol.
As much of you said was true, I didnt really read anything on putting MMO's that are still wanting to be played, out of their misery. I have seen a few MMOs out there that were doing well, then they shut down unexpectedly. One example of which was Holic Online. This was a promising game to many, untill NetGame America decided to pull out which resulted in the closing of not only Holic, but two others as well.
Then we have to ask the gamers, is it worth keeping the game running with such a small populous, in hopes that it will grow and for the few devout followers who are enjoying it to keep gaming? Or should we just shutdown?
I dont think that I will ever understand the MMO buissness world, even with very descriptive discussions like this one. I'm not even sure if I want to understand. I'll just sit back -with controller in hand- and see how they handle it.
Sometimes, less-than-stellar games try to stay alive by reworking their content or their payment scheme.
I think TR and DDO are some pretty interesting examples of this.
TR was a fairly decent game that was simply NOT WORTH a $15/month subscription fee.
Ditto for DDO.
DDO is now converting to a F2P/MT-based payment scheme, something I wish TR had somehow been able to do. TR's devs tried and to some extent succeeded in making the game much better by the end than it was at its beginning, but it was the subscription payment scheme, imo, that really killed TR. It was always going to be a second-tier game charging premium-tier subscription fees. That's a prescription for MMO suicide.
Of the two games, TR was the better game, but DDO had the better idea how to stay alive. If BOTH games had somehow switched to a F2P/MT basis, I think TR had a really decent chance to not only survive but grow, improve, and eventually gain some serious popularity.
DDO, not so much, but we'll see. At least Turbine was willing to "think outside the box", payment scheme-wise.
All mmo's are dead. The idea has so many possibilities, but those infinate possibilites are killed by way too many un-related limitations. ex: money, production deadlines, corperate creative restrictions... ect... ect...
The ones that I see die most are the bland, recreations of already not to great games. (99% of the f2p games)
Nobody wants to play "World of EverGold 2, the Endless Grind".
Or maby you do... seeing has how WoW is still popular, witch always has looked like a giant turd of a game to me anyways.
I have been looking for a new game to subscribe to for about a year now and all the games that have come down the belt have been very tack simplistic and of very poor quality
FALLEN EARTH this is my genra! without even hearing another thing about the game its allready has +2 on my score card only space and modernwarfare might rate higher. so when I say I am not following FE into live that means that it must fall very short of its potential.
CHAMPIONS ONLINE was kind of a back up runner up but when I tried the very short open beta (like 4 days?) I also found it also seemed to be of very poor construction and had no relation the the PnP version of the game when it came to power rules.
to me it seemed a poorly discuised COH wannabie
I did beta with SEED which ALL the beta testers posted the impending doom to deaf ears and it folded like a month after release the seed theme DESERVES another chance but with a real engine and content and it WOULD FLY (its theme was a crashed teraforming ship on a new world massive potential)
game designers have lost the knowlage of what is fun and interesting falling back into the tank and spank with combat oriented economies they dont acknolage all the other playstyles except as an after thought
WAR MONGER likes non stop action
ACHIEVER rank levels awards
EXPLORER: the world as well as the game mechanics
SOCIALIZER: they sometimes come into the game and can sit and do nothing but chat with friends or strangers
ROLEPLAYER: they love to delve the depths of their charactor and the race histories and motivations and alignments
RIDDLER: they love solving riddles puzzles languages misteries translating runes
BUILDER: these players tend to love building and crafting from swords and armor to whole castles and city walls and bridges that ma forever change the world some are artisans that just dont want to craft a basic war sword they want to be able to create nearly one of a kind works of crafting art.
BANKER: their goal is to gather valuables,, money property gems rare goods to become welthy whatever that is to the given game.
now everyone is all of these just they tend twords one or more of them more than others and there may be some ive missed im recalling this from a paper i did long ago
nearly all MMO have tended to focus only on the first and second one leaving the rest of the players with scraps,, starving for a game that will fill their desired game play.
example:: mmos place no importance on food and water so crossing a great desert is trivial.
example: national auctions means that a few masters are all that a game world needs and lesser crafters goods are worthless.
example: most MMOs have evenly distributed goods and resources so there is no market pressures no need for caravans to need to take pineapples up north to trade them for snow peas or fish from the sea to the iron mountains
example: vending machine merchants they have no other lives than standing and selling to players they also tend to buy and sell with infinity
example: food is unimportant and doesnt spoil which colapses reasons for several supporting crafts like basket weavers, potters meat smokers/dryers since there is no climate or seasons no need to collect wood for winter or store food
example: there is no real disease or pestilance on a large scale no famines or blights no goblins raiding the grain silos which all would make killer built in plot devices instead of generic kill 12/ collect 10 quests
example: there is no drama or bonding with the world players currently could care less if a game city is destroyed merchants are vending machines they dont even know our names or reputation
example: existing quests are predetermined one answer outcomes even the "evil" players must take a quest givers coin purse to the intended destonation instead of flat stealing it,, or you get to the chest in the cave you must kill all the orcs instead of sneeking or bribing or distracting so you do the quest BECAUSE it told you to not for any real or good reason.
example: you pop into the game allready a veteran you have no real life or family wife games should be a bit more raw and brutal to players have them enter the town as a pesant begging (or steeling) on the streets or scrounging behind inns for scraps let them get beat up by bullies or guards, let them get thrown into jail just along as its done fun! let them bond with bosses or teachers or gate guards they will begin to care if the city is attacked in the future. ((players will bond very strongly in times like these give them skills like throw object, cower, lol bite let them BECOME a fighter or mage vian a squire or apprentice if a game does it right it wont feel like some kind of tutorial, it will be just as fun as the rest of the game)
example organizations..churches there are no good religions in a game there are monks and clerics but no faith in which they belong no followers to convert, no collection plate, no temples its the same for mages or warriors they just dont belong to anything bigger than themselves WHY?
example the world is effectivly static its the same 1 month after release as it is 1 month before it folds unless there is a patch or expansion the players have no freedom to cause change to their world.. once a safe city allways a safe city forever.
players should be duel class an adventure class and a home class (i prefer a skill system hate to be limited by game saying that if im a blacksmith that for some reason im unable to comprehend how to fry an egg.)
Its time to put SWG out of its misery, the nge screwed over me, my wife, my guild, my friends and need to be put down hard.
Truthfully MMORPG did not have the infinite possiblity as people think even without the real life limitations.
it does have alot of potential, but it is no where close as having enough. MMORPG is simply RPG + many players all at once.
Whatever limitation apply to RPG applies to MMORPG. Only real difference is the MMO aspect can be developed a bit further than RPG themselves.
Not going to happen. For much the same reason that games using Gameguard aren't going to drop it. That would mean that some high placed suits have made a major mistake... And we all know how likely suits are to admit they made a major mistake...
World of Warcraft has not killed MMO's, nor has it ruined the style of other MMO's, nor is it the worst game pile of turds. WoW is the game responsible for breathing life into an otherwise tiny slice of video game players. If it weren't for WoW, I would not have any interest in an MMO. WoW is sort of the Gateway MMO that people play before getting into the harder stuff like EVE.
Had WoW not been created, or had it not been successful as it currently is, you wouldn't have so many new MMO's coming out. MMO's are not dead, they have evolved. There are of course the games that are being developed in the old style, but those are becoming more and more scarce. The fact is that if you don't like the way the genre has evolved, you honestly should not be complaining about how "In the old days we could pretend to write stories and declare war on others" because you all sound like people in their 80s talking about how Frank Sinatra was much better than the new style of music. And you probably shouldn't be on a website called www.mmorpg.com because MMO's are clearly not your cups of tea.
And yes, I would have loved to play a sandbox game, but I also am very interested in the new games coming out such as Aion, GW2, and SWTOR.
Well... That would require investors that have at least *some* idea about games to start with. Very, VERY unlikely. ALL investors care about is ROI(Return On Investment). Thats why most successful groups have specialists who hand hold the investors, and feed them shiny tech demo's and other such distractions to keep their attention off of the quarterly clock.
Undercapitalization is one of THE most serious problems that lead to failed games. Coupled with a lack of talent to implement The Vision(tm), they explain the overwhelming majority of the terrible failures we've all so painfully been witness to over the years.
Remember, this is games we're talking about - and just a genre of them.. Most of the worlds 6.78 billion population are actually doing something else, and most of the the tiny infinite portion of us playing mmo's have no time spending hours of hours in them. Playing games like going to work, grinding and raiding 24/7 is a phase some have to have. For most people gaming is just a couple of hours of fun every week.
So what can we learn when designing games from that..
DDO surviving is now up to the courts as Turbine is suing Atari over DDO, or rather DDU.
What truly boggles my mind is how it seems as if every new game that comes out is being "produced" by companies run by people that don't play games themselves. Maybe I should narrow that down to the people that hold the purse strings.
The movie "Groundhog Day" comes to mind. They live in that type of world that's the same day repeating over and over and they keep trying different things and not realizing that the outcome will be the same.
These people appear to have one thing in mind and only one thing, money. Regardless of common sense or their programmers or whomever telling them the idea is a bad one, they think it'll make them a few more dollars and they go with it.
For example, pushing a game out too early. How many times has that caused a game to do poorly or even to cause it to fail completely? Yet these people continue to do it. Another biggie to me is alienating and/or pissing off your customers by poor communication or lack of communication completely. SWG is THE prime example of both of these. It was pushed out too early, but it was able to recover. It continued on a while longer before it alienated and pissed off it's customers by totally ignoring their wishes/needs. Like an airplane that takes off with too little fuel and a rookie pilot who just got his license by reading "Flying Planes For Dummies". It might take off, it might fly a little while but it's destined to crash and burn.
Sadly I think that Champions Online is rolling down the same runway. Before the game has even been released Cryptic has managed to alienate and anger a large chunk of it's potential playerbase with the whole Lifetime Subscription fiasco. People hate to feel like they've been deceived, they also hate to think that a company that makes a product they enjoy doesn't care about their feelings.
Where do these guys think the money comes from? They act as if there's this huge pool of money and since Blizzard figured out a way to tap it, they can too. I've got news for you guys, it's not by running that huge pipe across the backs of your customers.
excellent post. Most of the stuff you wrote is also the reason why eve online has an ever increasing population.
It's interesting that Garrett made enough off of the failed Tabula Rasa to pay the Russians to fly him into space.
Also that a past gaming genius couldn't be resurrected to create a success in the 21st century.
I sense a big change coming. Game development time has to get down to one year to be able to keep up with hardware development and attract investors, and new methods of programming have to be developed to accomplish that.
I'm looking forward to the new developments using body control so we can all get our fat butts up out of our chairs and gaming becomes a healthy pasttime.
Heh http://footballsuperstars.com/post/do_androids_dream_of_electric_sheep_59/
That day will come but would we actually use it there have been a few such things in the past that I'm sure many have cluttering there cupboard dance mat's GH instrument's or my personal favourite thing for sitting a plantpot on the Wii fit board.
As far as SWG goes, time will tell the tale. First off, it's been stated by LA that they will continue to support SWG after TOR releases, though that very much remains to be seen. Second, at least a decent portion of the current playerbase would have to stay in order for the game to continue even operating, since subs righ now are critically low. If LA does continue allowing SWG to use the IP for SWG, and subscriptions don't immediately fall off a cliff, then TOR itself will be the deciding factor. If TOR is a great game, and meets most expectations, SWG will certainly fall. However, before those who 3 years later are still rife with hatred toward the game start to salvitate, there is still a real possibility that TOR will not be to SWG what the Death Star was to Alderaan.
Remember, the lead dev on TOR is the same guy who has caused you to cry yourself to sleep on your Yoda pillow for so many nights with the NGE. He's also the one who poured a tanker-load of gasoline on the fire the day after NGE launched by telling players during a Stratics.com chat that they were getting possitive feedback from the community as players were actually cancelling their accounts in numbers never seen before or likely to again in an MMO. I've personally tried to post on the TOR forums mentioning that there needs to be some showcasing of other aspects for a full feel of the game. While I was respectful and courteous in these posts, they were removed within 15 minutes each time. Apparently they only accept posts with delirious praise, kind of like the clamp SOE put on NGE posts, even the ones that weren't death threats.
TOR has shown very little of the non-core elements of the game to the public. Crafting has not been showcased, nor has character customization (the one and only game aspect that SWG not only excels at, but beats nearly any other game on the market at). No one knows, outside B/W Austin, how questing, PvP, space,or even speeders will work.
My point is, that while SWG certainly won't live on forever, SWG has been a severely flawed game from day one, (sorry pre-cu fans) and is still going. Don't start toasting just yet, because the players that are left are obviously a dedicated bunch, and TOR will have to be a top notch game that beats SWG on many levels, unless of course LA pulls the plug, to pry these players away and finally spell the end of the game that just won't die: Star Wars Galaxies
I flew into Space....AWESOME!!! I guess the booze took over because I cannot remember jack.....
hahaha, Garrett - E = Garrtt + IO = Garriott ....maybe Richard and I can start thinking up equations for fun while he is in space and I am driving to work....stuck here on the ground :)
Much as I dislike WOW,
QFT
" Seriously though, you're right. The misery of a game that makes about $150,000,000 A MONTH, is in horrible misery. Damn, just close the servers and delete the databases.. it's a horrible travestiy..."
There are tons of games out there that should be put down but like any gamble, the people with the money on the table will always try to hold out for the payoff.
Garrett,
Geez.... why did you guys have to use a picture of Ol' Yeller? It made me sad as soon as I saw that.
For those stinky MMOs that you're writting about, you should have used a picture like one of the following:
Hah! Old Yeller wasnt me.
Likely you can thank Evan for that....it made me laugh and say geezus at the same time.
THE MOUSE PICTURE ROCKS! HAHAHA that has unlimited uses!
LOL you don't really think Blizzard is making $150,000,000 a month of WoW do you? You can't really be that dumb...
"In closing, I often wonder if game developers ask the question in meetings, is this fun? MMOs that die, die for a reason. I truly believe it is because there is a huge lack of fun in the game. Something just did not jive with the players and that was it, game over. Perhaps before investors spend money, marketing plots the hype, and developers start designing endless code for a game, the game makers should ask that simple question: Will this be fun, Or should we put this idea out of its misery from the get go and save people a lot of time and money? Games are recreation for many people, if they are not fun, do not make them. If you make them like a job, people will eventually quit and find a better one. The story of the MMO industry is a good one to study for anyone wanting to develop video games. There are triumphs and losses, while some losses limp on into the next decade, others have been put out of their misery."
I am not an mmo developer but some problems apply to every kind of project in my opinion. (With a few differences like that i call players customers, my customers have lawyers and they don't take no for an answer). I think that mmo developers face about the same problems including the hudge gap between the design and implementation of an ideaware, customer-player needs and finally what tools they have in order to create a succesful (fun) customer experience.
But while i have almost every kind of tool to create, test, optimize and receive feedback from my users, mmo devs behave like they have nothing when it comes to a way that will relief them from the tremendous problems that design and implementation of massive interactions create and instead of using precoded frameworks they spend several years re-inventing the wheel which actually has nothing to do with the fun factor of the game itself.
I hope that new mmos like Stargate (Bigworld tech i think) Sw:ToR (Hero Engine) make a good use of these frameworks, become financially succesful and an example to other mmo companies who will dare to experiment with new ideas and focus in the fun part of their games without wasting time and worrying about issues that the majority of new mmos have.
Do you have a sick sense of humor or an office pool to see how many times someone whines about the NGE?
Seriously, It's like a sport to these guys to see who can't get over it the longest.
Did you see that one post?:
"THE NGE RUINED MY LIFE! my wife's life, my co workers life, and my dog died. He walked in front of a car because he went def from the frequency pitch of my constant whining. It even caused my friend to change his sexual orientation thus leaving his fiances dreams of a fairytale wedding in shambles".
Ffs.. <shakes fist>
I would have liked to see more names of games that might be put out of their misery in next 1 or 2 years. That includes big titles like AOC and WAR.
There is a HUGE market for good, solid, stable, bugfree MMOs. The thing is... There are few around.
MMOs have only so much to do with FUN. Part of playing MMO is about the comunity and the progression of the character. Its also very hard considering that Distance from server has HUGE impact on gameplay of many of these games (if the fun part is taken to FPS like games). Then ofc... these games are played at times when internet traffic is peaking and that effects the quality of gameplay alot.
So far only one developer has been able to build and maintain a top quality MMO. WOW isn't perfect but it has the key components in place from really high quality control down to good bandwith control to give players top quality gameplay. Thats something that alot of the other MMOS can not deliver.
I agree 100%, this seemed to be written in a hurry.
Love the picture you pick for this article for the homepage. Old Yeller really fits the article.
Here's some quote from Old Yeller that would work for MMOs:
[Travis has asked how he can tell if a creature has hydrophobia]
Burn Sanderson: You can't hardly tell at first, not till they get to the point of slobbering and staggering around. When you see a critter in that fix, you know for sure. But you want to watch for others that ain't that far along. Now, you take a bobcat or a fox. You know they'll run if you give 'em the chance. But when one don't run, or maybe makes fight at you, why, you shoot him and shoot him quick. After he's bitten you, it's too late.
(Ol' Yeller's gone rabid and Mama's holding a shotgun)
Travis: No mama! Mama: There's no hope for him now. He's sufferin'. You know we gotta do it. Travis: I know Mama... But he was my dog... I'll do it.
[You know what happens next]
HEY... why didn't you touch on the converse as counterpoint... E&B which was put down far too early.....
just a thought... don't want to write your next article for you or nuthin'...
I didn't even read teh article. I just came by to say that putting 'Old Yeller' on the cover of an article about putting MMOs out of their misery made me LOL pretty twisted, but funny as hell!
They do use licenced engines and tools for quite some time, like Unreal Engine (Lineage), CryEngine (AION) or Hero Engine (SW:TOR). Some have specialized tools for the MMO environment (like the Hero Engine), others are strong for other purposes but miss special MMO tools. Some companies also share tools and engine for their games (Age of Conan & Anarchy Online, card games in SOE's titles). As very complex pieces of software, however, there is no way around lots of custom code.
As a side note on SWG: Star Wars Galaxies is anyway no Star Wars game and never was. Anything remotely 'star warsy' is outnumbered 3720 to 1 by misplaced items, anachronisms and purple mandalorian armours that it's probably better to be not a Star Wars fan to enjoy the game. That means, your one and only Star Wars game slot is free for SW:TOR anyway.
Same here!
That was the first (and really only) movie that made me cry. Like a baby, I did.
I still can't even think about it.
Do you have a sick sense of humor or an office pool to see how many times someone whines about the NGE?
Seriously, It's like a sport to these guys to see who can't get over it the longest.
Did you see that one post?:
"THE NGE RUINED MY LIFE! my wife's life, my co workers life, and my dog died. He walked in front of a car because he went def from the frequency pitch of my constant whining. It even caused my friend to change his sexual orientation thus leaving his fiances dreams of a fairytale wedding in shambles".
Ffs.. <shakes fist>
Do you now, or have you ever worked for SOE?...<evil grin> While I'd not consider myself one of the zealots, I still remember the NGE with a sense of loathing and disgust. How people could be that damn blind to how bone headed the idea was, completely escapes me. One would have thought that someone over there would have said the immortal words You Simply Can't Do That! Oh well, time to move on before I really start to rant.
Do you have a sick sense of humor or an office pool to see how many times someone whines about the NGE?
Seriously, It's like a sport to these guys to see who can't get over it the longest.
Did you see that one post?:
"THE NGE RUINED MY LIFE! my wife's life, my co workers life, and my dog died. He walked in front of a car because he went def from the frequency pitch of my constant whining. It even caused my friend to change his sexual orientation thus leaving his fiances dreams of a fairytale wedding in shambles".
Ffs.. <shakes fist>
I agree ...i witnessed some prety bad decisions playing FFXI,but i never cried about it nor did i dwell on them.taking melee out of a rangers hands was lame IMO,jealous players caused that change,nerfing Dragoon and SAmurai was lameagain jealous players.Nerfing 2h damage and tp again lame ,obvious jealous 1h users thought their little toothpick weapon should have the same damage as a slow wielding huge sword.Sure i did not like any of it,but i lived with it .if i thought change was made for the better of the game,then even more so i accept it,if change was made just because others cry their class is nerfed or too weak,then i draw the line.
SOE was forced into changes for SWG because of tons of complaints.They made changes for the worse?who is to say?possibly so,but you know what ,someone had to make a move and they did,life goes on.I come and go from games all the time,i have seen tons of bumbling mistakes,but it's my choice ,i move on from that game if it gets too bad.
The ONLY time i encourage people to stay away from other games ,is if i think the developer is crooked and running a shotty operation.Like example..supporting RMT,botting,other cheats.If servers are unplayable,if the game locks up and crashes all the time.If they claim to be actively removing RMT ,yet load up Game Guard,they are lying.When you see a game claim thousands of banned accounts,yet you the player notice no change at all,they are again lying.When a game like SRO allows millions of bots to login illegally,yet the legit players can ONLY login by purchasing item mall gear,it is a crooked operation,stay away.If a developer runs a shotty charge system,or allows their servers to be hacked,it is not a game worth playing.
One thing SWG had going for it was a sense of accomplishment and things to target for.If the ONLY reason i log into a game ,is to worry about that next level,then the game has no merit.
Do you have a sick sense of humor or an office pool to see how many times someone whines about the NGE?
Seriously, It's like a sport to these guys to see who can't get over it the longest.
Did you see that one post?:
"THE NGE RUINED MY LIFE! my wife's life, my co workers life, and my dog died. He walked in front of a car because he went def from the frequency pitch of my constant whining. It even caused my friend to change his sexual orientation thus leaving his fiances dreams of a fairytale wedding in shambles".
Ffs.. <shakes fist>
Yes its incredible. I have two RL friends that whine about it to this day. It would be funny if it wasnt so sad.
Musical instruments as weapons? No one would ever be stupid enough to do that? Right?
Oh wait, LotRO has that, by itself jarring into harsh reality any roleplayer that cares about the world of Arda.
/endrage
This is a good article; it's always good to remember why these games fail. It's just as you say, because the developers don't actually play and test it enough to see if it's fun. Formulas and concepts only go so far.
I like these SOE hit pieces, It gets the 3 people that still play the nge really steamed.
Funny thing is we have moved on, most of us play polished bug free games, published by great companies. Your the ones that haven't. Your still playing the biggest chunk-O-pooh since 2005.
WoWs goal is to put you out of your misery first....>=)
EQ2 have it also. But it works rather ok in a fantasy setting. Too bad TR was Sci-fi.
Heck, anyone whos been playing D&D knows that bards can be dangerous. The question here was more: "Will this fit the TR lore"?
Anyways, fun is the most important factor for a game and devs should think more about it. I hope that Bioware have, they use to spend a lot of thought about it when they make a game.
i would assume a clean shot through the mainframe followed by a fuel doused burning of the datahubs and a final cleansing (bloody or otherwise) of the gameplay mechanics would do a pretty good job of putting an MMO out of it's misery.
Of course this could be achieved by a few well placed explosives but the neighbours may complain about shards of MMO splattering their nice walls
OMG cry more about the NGE.
They changed it for a reason folks, the game sucked. It always sucked and it still does. It was losing subs way before the CU. It was not "fun" grinding in that hell hole of a game that was worse then L2. They never went back for a reason...it sucked and wouldn't change anything just swap out one crying community for another.
Fanatics, that's the sorry old truth. Business decisions don't lie, a profit motivated company like SOE would have changed something if they thought they could score a worth while amount of YOUR dollars off of it. Obviously they don't.
So have a coke and smile and for the love of Pete stop your f*cking crying already.
While an interesting subject to be sure
An MMO goes down when it stops making money. Until that point, why does anyone care "when it should be put out of its misery"? This is really only an opportunity for the game haters to whine about about the "why ___ company or game sucks" to post their nonsense.
If the player base wants to play and the game is pulling a profit then that is all that matters.
The ironic thing is most of the people who feel they should "put a game out of its misery" don't even play them.
I have had my 12 guage ithica for 20+ years now, I want in on the action too
While certainly an interesting perspective... Thats not how it tends to work in some cases. Tabula Rasa was still making a profit when NCsoft pulled the plug. It just wasn't making "enough" profit for the Korean suits. As for the NGE, its usually a good topic to draw eye balls to a web page, simply because a LOT of people had invested hundreds and hundreds of hours playing the game before the bone headed changes took place.
This is a fantastic post and I want to draw more attention to it.
You don't get money from players by making it seem like you want to get money from them. That doesn't mean tricking them, either, (though I think that is what happened in SWG) it means focusing on making a game that is enjoyable to play. And this doesn't mean this ridiculous focus on FUN FUN FUN I keep seeing recently. Fun isn't the only thing that makes a game...fun. I need tension in my PvP, a genuine fear of something, probably death, in my PvE, crafting that takes time and effort and planning.
Of course, some might see this as grindy and not fun. And that is the problem. There is no one formula that makes games people enjoy playing. Just look at WoW V EVE. Both have large playerbases, both continue to get new players in, and they couldn't be more different in design and implementation.
The only way to make a good game is not to focus on making a "game" so you can make "money." People that play MMOs want a living, breathing world that in no way resembles our own Developers need to have their own, new, unique visions, and then run with them. WoW is the paragon of games NOT because of it's depth (or lack thereof) or storyline (or lack thereof). It is so popular because it is easy to get into, and easy to understand (but in some ways, difficult to master). That is what people want. That and the polish. You just will not find a game with the level of polish WoW has. Everything looks just as it should, even without addons the default UI is better than anyone elses (they are kind of stupid for not letting you move it around wherever you want ala GW/LotRO), the movement is organic, the early levels hold your hand, but don't feel too much like a tutorial; that hooks a new player.
People complain about a grind, but if the combat is fun in a game, a grind suddenly isn't so much a grind. You need some level of grind just to take up time. If players can master everything too easily, they will quickly grow bored and go do something else
I, like you, Drakon 911, am somewhat horrified yet mystified by investors that do not listen to the people making the games. Most of the time, someone making the game itself, the designers and programmers, like games themselves and in a general sense know if something will fail horribly. And yet...
What I think MMORPG should do is have an "article" about "What to players want in an MMO." That thread would be massive and have more fantastic suggestions than developers could handle. No, we wouldn't agree, but that fact alone should help developers.
You could have probably filled the space for this article with an advertisement.
I have played both and I enjoyed both. Game sdie when the makers deem them no longer profitable or worth continued investment of resources. I played TR to the end and it was just too little effort towards end game that came too late to save it, still wasn''t a bad game. I have plaayed SWG both before and well after NGE and it's a completely different game. It's still complicated, but not in the same way. The biggest problem with SWG is the stigma of the NGE. If you were to never have heard of or played it before in your life, there is a good chance you would enjoy it today.
There are other games you dont hear about expect maybe once a year that have been around forever and are still being played as much as any that survive the initial buy and try 30 days: DAoC, EQ1, EQ2, Eve, Anarchy Online, nd many others. Should these die too because people dont rave about how great they are constantly?
Uh, all over the place actually. It started immediately and hasn't stopped since. But it didn't really help since they admittedly were paying no attention to anyone on this end of the computer.
Everyone with any sense hates SOE now and won't touch them. This is a good thing in my opinion.
Are you stoned? You surely sound like it. Oh wait - I know... you failed at trolling. I get it.
Why else would someone suggest that a game with over 10 million CURRENT subscriptions should be put out of its "misery". Where, until recently, an estimated 3% of a countries ECONOMY is based off of selling items in the game world.
Seriously though, you're right. The misery of a game that makes about $150,000,000 A MONTH, is in horrible misery. Damn, just close the servers and delete the databases.. it's a horrible travestiy...
No, it's a simple and boring game. However, it's just that perfect balance of mindless and serviceable that somehow combines to be a lowest common denominator favorite.
McDonald's does great business, even though most folks will acknowledge that most of the food will kill you and tastes like it was coagulated from soylent green. Jerry Springer was hugely popular even though most folks admitted it was mindless sensationalist crap.
That a game makes money is an indicator that it is successful, not that it is good. Do not mix those two up.
That being said, no, I imagine WoW will be with us a long, long time. More's the pity.
I'll be a frankly honest whore now, though, and say that if they brought the game back to the day before NGE went live and I could have my Master DE / Master Shipwright, my house, and my piles of materials back and go back to doing what I loved, I'd probably be there in a cold minute.
But, yeah, death to SOE.
Ahh yes. Fun.
The danger here is that you can take the whole concept too far. MMOs are interesting things and often what makes an MMO fun is a combination of elements including elements that are not fun by themselves.
As an example of the concept I like to use Silent Hunter III. It's not an MMO but it does demonstrate the point.
Travel in SH III involves physically sailing from port to your patrol grid and back again. Even with time compression this can take ages (hours). Boring stuff. Only it isn't. Because there is tension. Every time you see a ship, or get a sonar contact, or see an air craft there are choices to be made and the very real possibility that a wrong choice could spell "GAME OVER".
They could have designed the game to 'warp' you to your patrol zone and back again. But if they had done that the game would have lost something that gave the player a sense of attachment to his boat and his crew. So a boring element becomes 'fun' or at least contributes to it in a meaningful way.
Back to MMOs (one that should probably be on the list already and one that is sure to join if it is ever released)
PotBS and The Agency.
Pre release for PotBS I saw a video interview with one of the FLS devs (can't find the link now).
For that entire interview he rabbited on about "FUN!"
"We ditched this because it wasn't fun...", "...couldn't find a way to make it fun..." etc etc.
Right then I knew the game was in trouble.
Yes, they stripped out stuff that wasn't fun, and in doing so somewhere along the way they stripped out the game's soul.
What was left was a shell of an MMO that people just don't want to play.
The Agency is the same. Again I saw a video interview and saw the same idotic focus on "Fun, fun, FUN!"
Yes, this approach might work for a console game, but MMOs are a whole different style of game.
Sometimes it's the 'non-fun' elements that allow the fun elements to even work.
So the pursuit of fun can be a double edged sword.
Your Silent Hunter 3 reference actually reminds me of an MMO equivalent (sort of) in EVE, where I used to have endless fun running high-value parts through the gauntlet out to 0.0 space through hordes of PvP-happy pirates using my little cloaked frigate. It's a long tedious run, and to survive it, you have to manually jump the ship. It COULD be uneventful, or you could be running for your life. Tension and excitement in a 'nonfun' activity.
I beta tested PotBS. I played it live for over a year, involved in a nice big society and making big ships. And I came to be VERY BORED with the game. Other than a lot of 'fun' changes which are supposed to increase/improve PvP (the ONLY thing the devs seem to consider fun), there really hasn't been any content added in, uh, EVER. And you can only play a game of capture the port back and forth for so long before it's boring, repetitive, and no longer interesting. "Fun."
A couple points here. First one is exactly what I've ben saying for years now. The fact that some games out there ARE, ostensibly, WoW clones (a term I hate) is a major problem. They're not WoW clones because WoW is a pioneering MMO. It's not. It's a well-assembled conglomerate of the most successful aspects of games that came before it (most notably the EQ family, UO, etc.). It's about as derivatively vanilla as you can get. But it became RIDICULOUSLY popular, and other gaming studios wanted that success (read: money) and tried to make their games WoW. But there is ALREADY a WoW, so everyone else suffers the Xerox effect, and fails, does poorly, or at least not as well as hoped/expected.
EVE, on the other hand, is a wholly independent game design. There's no room in the world for 12 WoWs. There is certainly room for WoW and EVE. So the focus needs to be not on cloning something currently successful, but finding an unoccupied niche (or creating one if you're bold) and filling it.
As for polish, I agree. I am not a fan of WoW; this is obvious. That being said, there is no denying that its easy learning curve and ability to direct the player without being super hamfisted about it is a welcoming and comforting aspect for new players and probably explains a good deal of its success. I would NEVER go so far as to call it a paragon of ANYTHING. :-D
You have lost your damn mind. The game most certainly didn't "suck" to most of the players. It sucked for YOU,, and most likely because you sucked at IT.. All MMO's loose an amount of subs after release just because the game isn't for everyone. Grind? I never felt like I was grinding.. Maybe the phrase "You're doing it wrong" should be put here? PRE CU was a blast of a game and a huge community. People were not all about the "end game" race to get to the top. It actually had heart and again COMMUNITY. That is lacking from a lot of MMO's today.
You have lost your damn mind. The game most certainly didn't "suck" to most of the players. It sucked for YOU,, and most likely because you sucked at IT.. All MMO's loose an amount of subs after release just because the game isn't for everyone. Grind? I never felt like I was grinding.. Maybe the phrase "You're doing it wrong" should be put here? PRE CU was a blast of a game and a huge community. People were not all about the "end game" race to get to the top. It actually had heart and again COMMUNITY. That is lacking from a lot of MMO's today.
It's been years and I'm STILL looking for the next SWG. So to speak. And there really WASN'T an endgame, per se. Since folks were constantly deciding they could better optimize their builds and tweaking their skills, pitting their custom ideas against someone else's custom ideas. And some of us could just craft. Beautiful.
Quite a few sharp posts here. Good read.
My 2 cents:
The unprofessionalism of the gaming industry continues to baffle me. Granted, the industry is young and I'm sure other art forms had their share of wild days, but do they all have to go through the same process individually? Do they all have to invent the wheel each in their own seperate space?
Making a good MMO may be alot of work and demand great skill, but is it theoretically really that hard? If you stick your finger in the ground and acknowledge the fact that it has to be polished, user friendly and maybe even a tad fresh, doesn't that carry you a very long way towards a successful game?
Maybe there just isn't enough talent to go around.
I think this question comes up at the end of just about every beta for the last decade when most reasonable people are aware of a plethora of remaining bugs that the developers can no longer afford to remedy pre-release. This kind of piss-poor planning and development is one of the key reasons expectations have dwindled and a shoddy product at launch has become the de facto standard. And that does NOT bode well for your industry, especially when hunting for investors.
Ah Earth and Beyond. A Game that was killed by the publishers before it even hit the market. To those that don't know E & B was originally developed by Westwood Studios. The concept and stories that were created and the the subsequent development were in essence great. Then along comes EA who bought out Westwood to get the Command and Conquer IP. E & B went along for the ride. EA then proceeded to destroy the game by going in a different direction. With next to nothing in marketing and with little to nothing for development resources the game died. It did manage to last 2 glorious years because of the great community the game spawned but alas EA killed it.
MYtwo cents worth.
What baffles me a bit more is the arm-chair quarterbacking of players. Which is to say it's not baffling at all.I'm actually a bit disappointed in the lack of industry knowledge by the author of this article.
The fact is MMOs are the most complex piece of software that exists in the marketplace. And it's not just the whole, it's the parts. Rendering, graphics, animations, networks, server technology, database. MMOs tie all the relevant technologies together to create a seamless world, and this is non-trivial. Which is why we see a trend towards middleware solutions. But technology and design have a fairly intimate relationship, and many studios don't like to be bound by such external requirements (they want to be able to modify source code as needed). But I digress. To make a triple-A MMO you need really a lower bound of about 100 developers working for a couple of years minimum, not including QA or customer service. In reality it's somewhat higher and longer. This is a relatively large scale for a single software project, so in addition to the technical requirements you also need competent project management. This also assumes the designers are experienced, and are capable of making a fun and well-balanced game. And MMOs are the hardest genre of game to design, because players inherently impact the game experience of other players. Considering the impact of anonymity on human behavior, if there's any chance of that impact to be negative, it will be. Players rarely do what designers intend, and the more freedom a player has, the rarer that becomes. If this is a single player game it doesn't matter. I'm sure Will Wright never intended players of The Sims to get the most enjoyment out of torturing the denizens of their game world. In an MMO it does matter, because player A directly impacts the subscription revenue from player B - interacting with others is why we play MMOs after all.
There are two other facts worth mentioning. The first is that by software industry standards, game developers are some of the least paid on average, and this makes it hard to obtain the top talent. The second fact is that most commercial software projects (even projects on very well-known applications such as accounts receivable programs) are failures, for a variety of reasons. Heck, most businesses fail in their first year, so this isn't even limited to the software industry.
Contrary to the position put forward by the article, in my experience most MMO developers enjoy playing MMOs. You don't take less pay to work on a game, unless you are really into games. You don't work countless hours of unpaid overtime, unless you are passionate about making a great MMO. So it's not a matter of going into a meeting and saying "oh, let's remember to ask if this is fun" Quite frankly, that's pretty insulting.
I would counter that statement with the following: "What is fun?" If you ask 100 different gamers, you will get 99 different responses. Yet an MMO world seeks to provide fun for all them, in a manner where nobody's fun detracts from anyone else's. Niche MMOs attempt to address this issue by deliberately and unabashedly limiting the scope, and say: we are only catering to X kind of gamer, who enjoys Y kind of fun. This is an admission that certain kinds of fun are mutually exclusive, which is why we will never see a mainstream hardcore PvP MMO. And at the end of the day, MMOs are a business. Gaming is not a human right, players are not "owed" anything by the gaming industry as a whole. There is no consumer entitlement to great products
If you buy a $60 single player title, you would reasonably expect to get a month's worth of enjoyment out of it. But with the same $60 spent on an MMO box (with a free first month), players feel that if they don't get at least a year's enjoyment it was a complete waste of time. So I also think MMOs are held to a higher standard. Why? Because there is something uniquely compelling about living in a virtual universe, with virtual friends and virtual things, and remaking yourself into whatever you want to be inside that universe. Everyone can fulfill the American Dream, just in pixilated format.
So if there is such a burning commercial demand for an MMO wherein a player can completely immerse himself in a believable and spectacular game world, and such an MMO does not exist, one has to wonder why. Is it because supply and demand stopped working? I don't think so. I think the only obvious conclusion is simply that MMOs are extremely difficult to get right.
Ah Earth and Beyond. A Game that was killed by the publishers before it even hit the market. To those that don't know E & B was originally developed by Westwood Studios. The concept and stories that were created and the the subsequent development were in essence great. Then along comes EA who bought out Westwood to get the Command and Conquer IP. E & B went along for the ride. EA then proceeded to destroy the game by going in a different direction. With next to nothing in marketing and with little to nothing for development resources the game died. It did manage to last 2 glorious years because of the great community the game spawned but alas EA killed it.
MYtwo cents worth.
I well remember E&B. I still have the original box up on my game shelf. Good game, and great community. Its too bad that EA(as usual) didn't have a clue about what a gem they had. All too typical of their usual short sighted corporate mentality.
The football analogy is not good. If the spectators voted on the outcome of a match, it would be good, but they don't. We are armchair customers and what the armchair says, goes.
So the making of an MMO is a massive undertaking, so what? If noone wants to do it, fine, I can wait. It's not like I play cruddy products anyway so what's the difference? But someone wants to do it and claims to have done it all the time and just a very small portion of them actually deliver.
Even if you did get 99 different responses (which is a wild exaggeration and perhaps even a little off topic) The game that those 100 players would like to play would have to be.. you got it: Polished, Userfriendly and A tad fresh.
Which of those 99 players the developer would like to cater to is entirely up to them. It doesn't change anything with regards to my point.
What some of us are trying to say is that you should be able to foresee what's going to happen. You should be able to say: Our game at the very least has got to be these things: <Insert list here>
We are going to build something with wheels and experience has shown us that in order for the vehicle to hold up, the wheel has got to have a minimum number of spokes. If we can't guarantee that, forget it, we need to work on figuring that out before we do anything else.
Comprendo?
Many people are able to foresee what's going to happen early in a development process but the choo choo steadily continues on it's way to doom, sometimes for years, spending millions of dollars in fuel on it's journey towards a crash and burn into the wall of consumer reality.
Why do you think that is?
Human nature for one. People in positions of power do not like to admit mistakes. The people under them do not wish to risk their jobs(its mainly a pay check to most of those in the trenches). By the time the train starts to derail, its long past the time to change direction. The code base is HUGE by that time, and horribly complex. Some of the original people are gone, and with them went their experience. Damn few professional programers are any good at documenting their work. Which makes it a waking nightmare to deal with their code contributions. By this time the investors are already in a state of panic, and are not interested in throwing good money after bad, in a gamble on the new direction. This theme has played out in game after game.
This is what I consider a player entitlement mentality. In my opinion, it's not what the customer says that goes. That would be neither practicable nor good business sense. It's what the company which is creating the product says, that goes. They are the professionals after all. You would not want to see the horrible beast of an MMO designed and developed by a committee of players.
To use an analogy of another consumer product, you are not entitled to a car that GM makes for you, personally. You cannot demand things of GM because you drive a car. The most you can do is simply purchase some other brand. Saying GM should do this or that, with all the authority of a customer, is the same armchair. aka: where's my flying car?!
The customer/player of an MMO can choose to purchase the product, or not purchase the product. So I think arm-chair quarterbacking is a very appropriate analogy, because just a skim of these boards shows that many players seem to "have all the answers," which is very convenient when they are not the ones funding and developing an MMO :) Especially on MMOs they neither play, nor have any intent of playing.
Again, the rules of supply and demand are not broken in the realm of MMOs. If customers want something enough (and are willing to pay for it), and it is possible, the marketplace will produce it.
Oh, I'm sure if a project is doomed to fail the developers are the first to know, not the last. It's the same reason horrible movies get made, or horrible cars, or horrible anything.
Here's the problem. Back in 1994 you could make a triple-A game title with a $500,000 and a small team of maybe 10 core developers. The Lead Designer had the vision, and it was easy to communicate to the team and keep an eye on every detail. Projects of such scale don't need a serious project management layer. I suspect this more or less describes Ultima Online (I could be wrong).
These days you need tens of millions of dollars, team sizes numbering in the hundreds, and years and years. Part of this is player expectation, and part is just the evolving technology. Technology has become so specialized you need lots of different experts for different areas of the game. Your engine coders, network coders, render coders, GUI coders, DBAs, technical artists... these are all highly specialized. The technology demands it.
And the fact is the ability to be a good Lead Designer and the ability to be a good Executive Producer have no necessary correlation. In cases where the roles are split, you end up with a polished uninspired mess. In the cases where the roles are not split, you end up with an under-polished "great idea" that never hits a release date and finally ships missing half its features. You need project management to coordinate all those different specialized jobs. But project managers have authority, and are generally not designers.
What trial-and-error has yielded is that applying processes from Software Engineering to what is ultimately a creative endeavor, makes the most business sense. While this works somewhat well for Microsoft Office (or insert random business application) where success is measured by functionality and feature sets, it doesn't quite work out well for MMOs where success is measured in how much fun the players are having. WoW is a success not because Blizzard is packed with super-designers, it's a success because Blizzard had a decade of experience shipping great games. I believe if they had made Shadowbane or Darkfall instead of WoW, it would be just as successful. Most MMO companies don't have this sort of experience, so their internal organization structure is non-optimal, their processes are unrefined, and their expectations are unrealistic. So no matter how great the Lead Designer's vision is (normally it isn't even his vision originally), it's just not going to happen when you throw hundreds of people at it, with varying degrees of experience (as I said it's hard to find talent), impatient investors, and untested technology.
The MMOs that we all want to play will come when the technology catches up in the form of well documented scripting languages where small teams can get back to making games, and some advancements in IK and procedural texture generation. As it stands now the bulk of an MMO development team is coders, artists, QA, followed by producers, associate producers and various managers, followed by designers. You make great business software like that, not great games, unless you are a company like Blizzard which is extremely efficient and has worked all the kinks out of their workflow pipelines (generally project managers are a poor substitute for good pipelines). Unfortunately, what we have now is what we're going to get until MMOs can get made entirely in high-level languages.
Occasionally you have a bright gem like EVE, which was done by a small core team. Note the whole thing was originally written in stackless python which is a high level language. But the game has suffered for it, it has huge limitations (where's my flying avatar?) which relegate it to a very successful niche game.
As a customer you have two options: play the games that are out there, or don't, and wait for the revolution.
My posts are about fundamentals, and fundamentals is where it's at to a very large degree. (Hence the wheel invention analogies etc)
I'm pretty sure you wouldn't debate that there is a number of basic things that any car is expected to be able to do, regardless of what differences there could be on a more detailed level.
There is not a car manufacturer in the universe that would consider going into business with cars that won't even run properly. Yet, that's exactly what mmorpg developers do over and over again.
We're not discussing the same thing.
We're not asking for flying cars. We're asking why so many game developers have to invent the combustion engine (and failing) every time they wanna make a game.
We must be talking about different things, because I'm not sure you appreciate what goes into making a triple-A MMO. Although I sincerely hope you are reading my posts and not just skimming them for argue points.
So let's take a step back.
What do you consider the "fundamentals" of MMO development to be?
Overall, the article was 'okay'. Seemed like the article went into a 'preaching to the converted' mode for a bit, but not a bad write-up on whole.
SWG is an easy target. It's also been a valid target since the CU and NGE. I was once a big fan of SWG. I still just can't see why Sony didn't do something to roll back the servers in some way, shape, or form. I think everyone wonders that. Anyway... any SOE/SWG bashing that takes place = good times, imho.
I know there are still SWG fans and players out there. I guess they like their game, and that's cool... I just miss the old system.
It is importnt to note that the majority of MMOs really do not do well in their first year however often pick up in their second. this is because of patching, fixing, and expansions. An example currently undergoing this change is Age of Conan.
Good point. AoC is alot of fun up to level 20. Then it drops right off the map. The first time through the Island is really enjoyable. The graphics are really nice. But the rest of the game seems hollow. Its like they used most of their time on the first 20 levels for a tech demo for the investors, and then the rest of the game was *much* less well thought out and developed.