Category: MMO Design (Page 32 of 36)

In this thread, some people challenged my assertion that WoW has long-term staying power:

Remember WoW is a nice game, any game when it comes out the starting grind and game experience is usually fun and fresh because it is new. Once the player has reached the top level one time repeating that on multiple characters doesn’t stay fresh it becomes an annoyance.

Certainly, that’s the way it’s been in the past, but if it must ALWAYS be that way in the future of MMOs, our genre is doomed.

I suspect we’ll hear more complaints about the grind in WoW in the future as these issues come to light. When people hit max level quickly they will start alternate characters, and it feels a lot more like a grind when you have to complete 90% of the same quests again, run through and explore the same areas again, hope for the same rare drops again.

And here I disagree. Continue reading

A lot of talk has been happening about World of Warcraft, and what they did so right to enjoy such success. The general consensus amongst most observers is that, well, there just isn’t a lot new there. And so, unsatisfied with the response that people came because the game was simpler and dumbed down from standard RPG fare, people have been asking what is it about WoW that the hardcore gamers have decided is better? The same answers keeping coming up: the quests and the lack of a grind. Continue reading

Jamie Fristrom, whose been known to pontificate himself from time to time (when his blog is up and running, that is), had this to say:

But didn’t WoW itself fight fire with fire by taking the best features of the best MMO’s and combining them?

An excellent question. The copout answer is that, inside the games industry, Blizzard is a law onto themselves. But I’m not satisfied with that, of course. The books I’m distilling this line of philosophy from (Positioning and the 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by the esteemed Al Reis) are full of examples about how unbeatable titans like Coca-Cola, Xerox and Volkswagen screw up because they extended into new territory with a me-too product. So let’s dig further.

Continue reading

At first glance, you would have sworn that Earth and Beyond would crush Eve. Earth and Beyond had a huge team, an enormous budget, a spiffy marketing plan and a head start. It had a supremely talented team, including many responsible for various Command and Conquer licenses and others with MMO pedigrees (a rarity at the time). It had a winning idea – a modernization of classic games like Netrek and Elite with a massively multiplayer component. And, of course, most of all, it had the Electronic Arts label. And nobody beats EA, right?

A funny thing happened on the way, though. Somehow, on the way, E&B became “Everquest with Spaceships”, first in the mind of its execs and design team, and after that, in the mind of it’s fans. It’s as if, whenever facing a design crossroads, they asked themselves, WWEQD. “What would Everquest do?” Continue reading