The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

Category: MMO Design (Page 30 of 36)

Microtransactions are Coming

Over at Press the Buttons, Matt G has waxed philosophically about microtransactions, and what they mean for the industry. He predicts doom and gloom for fans of affordable gaming. I know his mindset. I was there ten years ago. As I’ve aged, though, I’ve actually become more open to the idea. I’m not there yet, but I’m intrigued by the possibilities.

Microtransactions are not a new idea. 3DO and Sega both experimented with the technology back in the ’90s, and neither initiative really got off the ground. The problems weren’t all market pressure — it feels risky to claim that Microtransactions are going to be your bread and butter when many MMOs can’t keep from occasionally double-billing you. It feels financially unsound when many MMOs can’t keep the occasional dupe bug from slipping through the cracks. It feels legally terrifying when many MMOs occasionally just plain lose a player house. Microtransactions takes these engineering problems, and elevates them from ‘this is pretty damned important’ to ‘if this doesn’t work flawlessly, we’ll all be wearing barrels in a Tijuana jail’. Continue reading

Turbine escapes Eye of Vivendi, seizes One License

For months, little information has come out from Turbine regarding their MMO based upon the hottest fantasy license in the world. In retrospect, it seems inevitable. Vivendi has been trying to build a Middle Earth Online for nearly a decade as far as I know of, including two attempts to build it at their Sierra studio. Their first attempt was cancelled near the beginning of UO2 development. Which was a lifetime ago. When looked at that way, from a business perspective it’s absolutely shameful that some version of MEO wasn’t up and running when the Peter Jackson movies were providing joygasms to the entire geek universe. Continue reading

Taking the Long View of WoW

On the heels of Blizzard’s announcement that they’ve reached the 1.5 million mark, Thor Alexander (former UO2 AI guy and currently editor of the recently released Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2) asks an interesting question: could WoW kill Blizzard? Sure, this seems like an absurd question, until you realize that in retrospect, UO killed Origin (and, I might add, outlived it). Salient quote:

It reminds me of Origin back in 1999 after the success of Ultima Online when the studio announced that it would forsake any further single player game development in favor of all MMP games. When I asked my project manager about the radical shift I was enlightened to the fact that UO had brought in more revenue then all single player Ultima games combined.

Continue reading

The Power of Persistence

I, personally, think of instanced dungeons much like butter on popcorn – a tasty addition, but easy to overdo if you’re not careful. With that mentality, I went to listen to Raph Koster, Anthony Castoro (Producer of UO), Marc Jacobs (DAoC) and Jack Emmert (of CoH fame) debated instantiated spaces vs persistent ones at GDC.

There seemed to be an odd belief that WoW is a victory for the instantiated space model. Personally, I think quite the opposite – I’ve played WoW substantially, and yet probably spent fewer than 5% of that time has been spent in instances. Instances are the cherry on top of their persistent world, but by no means does the experience center on them. This works well. It also stands in stark contrast to the ‘mostly instantiated’ philosophy that seems to drive the next generation of titles such as City of Heroes, Guild Wars and Tabula Rasa. Continue reading

Sony Picks On Imaginary WoW Problems

Apparently, the SOE marketing department plays on a different server than I do (found by MMODIG). I’ve had no significant downtime on my server, and no queues since launch. Hint: if your server population is listed as ‘Please Mommy Make It Stop’, perhaps you should consider switching realms.

I wish there was some visibility to how effective this PR campaign of Sony’s was. Positioning yourself against the competition’s flaws is all good and well (”the uncola”, “we try harder”), but if you haven’t nailed a flaw that really resonates with your playerbase, you’ll just come across as small and bitter.

Does this flaw resonate? I don’t know. I do think that most people would rather wait in line for the cool club than get a drink immediately with the one that’s lame. Which means that Sony’s problem should be, first and foremost, to change the perception of their game. Personally, I think they should advertise on their strengths — more content and more elder game. This should be a powerful message as people start to get their characters to the end of the WoW content train.

Munchkinism

Every now and then, I invite some of my friends over to play a marvelous little Steve Jackson game called Munchkin. The game is about power-levelling through a standard swords and sorcery encounter. Munchkinism is, in the SJ lexicon, a synonym for hysterical power-levelling. Continue reading

Player Failure in MMOs

While reading old threads in Terranova (who was kind enough to link my crack-laden pyramid missive from yesterday), someone asked ‘Why don’t players put up with failure in an MMO?‘ A shocking number of them respond with variations of ‘because players are spoiled, whiny little bitches who only like Everquest clones’. Which is to say, I found most of the responses to be incredibly close-minded about the existing player-bases of these MMOs and why they do what they do. The unwashed masses don’t seem to mind failing while playing Halflife 2 and Crash Bandicoot, but I’m supposed to believe that the MMO crowd is so much more coddled that they can’t take a few lumps? Please. There’s more going on here.

Players don’t like to fail in MMOs because failure persists. In Half-Life, you’re one quickload away from being back in the thick of things again. In WoW, by contrast, you lack the ability to get right back to the moment before failure (this is exascerbated in group situations where you have to get your party rezzed, rested and buffed. Failing isn’t what’s not fun (sometimes, in fact, failing is hysterical). The recovery isn’t fun.

Players don’t like to fail in MMOs because they have an audience. For those of us who live and breathe games, it’s often forgotten that there is stigma and shame associated with losing and learning in front of other people. I’ve known many people who were reluctant to play a new board game at a party because they were afraid of making an embarrassing mistake because they didn’t know the rules. In an MMO, that same dynamic exists, only the audience is not your friends.

Players actually don’t mind failing as much as you think — provided they know they’re taking a risk. There is a way to increase your difficulty level – it’s called fighting higher-level stuff. My friends and I do this frequently in WoW, going into instances we have no place being in, and laughing hysterically as we’re dismantled. Conversely, I’ve never been so angry at the game as when, in another instance I should have been able to handle easily, some designer thought it would be cute to put in a hidden trigger trap with no warning whatsoever which spawned more monsters than we could reasonably handle. If the game feels fair, failure is something that most players can swallow easily.

But most people will not choose to stay at a high failure level for long periods of time. Hey, if someone plays WoW for 500 hours, you really expect him to spend most of it in high-octane mode? It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s dangerous to turn it into a full-time emotional roller coaster ride.

Of course, most of the presuppositions in the thread assumes, once again, that standard EQ/WoW combat is boring and easy. Which, if you’re soloing stuff that you can solo, is true. However, it bears repeating that combat situations in these games is very fast and furious when in a group situation, and failure is relatively common while exploring dungeons and instances.

The simple roles that each class offers is necessary so players can keep track of what’s going on when they are in a fight — what are they supposed to do, what are their teammates doing, who needs help, etc. In most MMOs, combat is simple. But people – they’re complex. And most failure stems from other people. If you make failure too punative or common, you create a world where players are completely unwilling to group with strangers. And that would most definitely be a failure.

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