The perfect MMO

[Merusk]

Damnit, I miss all the fun.

[Slyfeind]

What just happened?

[Lantyssa]

What's up on June 27th?

National HIV Testing Day!  I can't wait.

[Merusk]

Oh, right, my bad. Where you write has no effect on your reputation.

  You are correct, where I write does not, however what I write does.

You cannot aspire to be Tolstoy and write for the Weekly World News. Yes, where you write matters.

[Tale]

It was suggested that I post this article on this website by a new acquaintance

Cheddar set you up!

hopefully an admin will simply delete the thread.  If not I will see if I can delete it myself, thanks for the heads-up!

That's the noob move, not the original posting. You had the most active thread on the board and for better or worse, many people will read your work, so if you believe in what you wrote, put it back.

[stray]

To sum it up, the MMO industry is plagued by two things (sometimes seperately, sometimes together): Vision-itis or Status-Quo-itis. Yada, yada, yada.

What it needs is Tony Bennett.

This is a guy totally driven by the need to entertain. His first priority isn't what will sell. Nor does he sing whatever he wants to when he gets on stage. He sings what the crowd wants him to -- And he loves it. He lives for it. He'll sing El Segundo a million times in one night if that's what the crowd wants. And he does all of this so well that he ends up making a fat buck out of it too.

[Soukyan]

It was suggested that I post this article on this website by a new acquaintance

Cheddar set you up!

hopefully an admin will simply delete the thread.  If not I will see if I can delete it myself, thanks for the heads-up!

That's the noob move, not the original posting. You had the most active thread on the board and for better or worse, many people will read your work, so if you believe in what you wrote, put it back.

Seriously, put it back up. Don't give in that easily. You have our attention, now let us provide counter-arguments and persuade us. The sheer size of that post was disconcerting. Perhaps a series of posts on each topic might be a better approach. Oh, and in the game development forum perhaps if you wish to discuss the topic of design and how it can be improved. But, that's just my opinion. Dennis Miller could be wrong.

[Yoru]

  The recent 6 million+ subscriber base of WOW already has a few devs saying "well if we only had 10% of WOW subscribers we would be a success".  Why aim for the bottom 10%?  A point you make is that the genre was born out of the needs of the developers, however this has changed, EQ2 tried to push the title with no PvP and down it went, DDO tried to force grouping, wtf?  This is exactly what I am saying, these are not the days of UO and Everquest so why are the devs still trying to push like titles?  Right now there are more players that feel "stuck" in WOW then you can imagine, what is the problem with pushing an MMO to the next level?  When I mentioned "The Perfect MMO", I did not mean an MMO without flaw, I simply meant an MMO that is far above and beyond what is currently on the market and in development.

P.S.  While I encourage all the constructive critism that you guys can deal, what is up with all the flames?(Not directed at the person that I quoted here)  I mean, is this the same as a public MMO board?  When the name of this site was brought to my attention, I was under the impression that it was a mature website, that could give some feedback on the article.  Yet it seems quite a few peeps are more worried about me or my creditenials.  Would it not be more intelligent to comment on the article?

Why aim for the bottom 10%? Money. Game publishers are about money. Many game dev studios are about money - someone has to write Madden 2007, the Da Vinci Code game and all the other drek that random people are willing to throw cash at to get made. MMOs are a golden goose if you can develop them properly; a steady subscriber base of 600,000 (or hell, 100,000 if you only want to count the North American market) paying $15/month is a lot of revenue.

It's nice to say that devs should suffer for their art and produce awesome, innovative, rock-solid, fun games. I'd also like politicians to be honest, industrialists to work for the public good, and so on. As long as money is in the equation, someone will be In It For The Money, which means they're not going to give a flying fig about what you think so long as a good crowd ponies up the dough.

But regardless, Greed will save Teldar Paper. Why? Because if the proportion of the population that games expands, then the amount of money flowing around in the games industry expands. Most of it will go to EA, Vivendi and the other fat cats churning out stuff most people around this forum wouldn't use to wipe their ass. But that means the number of people who get bored of that stuff and look deeper into it, scraping around indies and maybe making some amateur games themselves - that population will grow in positive proportion of the mass market. People need to get exposed to stuff to get turned on to it, and that's what the mass market guys are good at - putting accessible games into a lot of living rooms.

I see no evidence provided to support your claim that EQ2 is going 'down in flames'; if you believe MMOGChart, it's hovering around 200k-250k; not a WoW success, but that's still cash money flowing into the bank. Further, I see no evidence to support your claim that the market is 'bored' of WoW. Anecdotally, I know several folks who have been playing WoW since release, raid every week, and are hot in the pants over the next patch. I know some folks who have quit, and an equal number who recently got turned on to it. And since anecdotal evidence is essentially bunk - again, look at their announced numbers or at whatever other source you believe, such as the weekly top selling games lists. WoW is consistently in the top 10, and the subscriber growth rate is still climbing. Consumers are not particularly dumb with their money; if they're sick of WoW, they will unsub and go do something else. What metric are you measuring "stuck-feeling-ness" by?

As for the reactions... you posted a dissertation of broad assertions about what "The Perfect MMO" would be, completely disregarding the realization that games are entertainment, and what's entertaining for Jimmy McCatass is not entertaining for Sally the Wife Who Plays Kingdom Hearts Occasionally. Further, many of your statements were so vague as to be worthless. Companies should hire good people, but maybe they should hire some new people too so they get new ideas. Either implement crafting or don't. Fix bugs.

What were you expecting - the forum to fall to our knees and fellate you for the (dubious) wisdom of what seems to be essentially another guy who writes articles on the internet? Not even Raph or Lum, both of whom have vast reservoirs of credibility capital, could get away with posting that tract as Wisdom without a lot of folks here pointing and laughing. Because, really, what you brought to the table were some stale generalizations about the industry and business, disgused as 'insights', and then peppered them with arbitrary, context-less game design decisions about what would be the Ultimate MMO (for you).

Thank you, drive through.

[Soukyan]

Isn't it strange how this forum in and of itself is the true MMO that none of us can resist? Perhaps this is the perfect MMO...

[stray]

[NINJA!]

I had the same thought yesterday.

[Nebu]

It was deleted before I had a chance to read it.  One thing I enjoy about these boards is knowing that there are people out there that aren't as jaded as the rest of us... yet.  I'm sorry I missed the chance to give it a look.  I'm like to think I'm somewhat objective about these things.

[schild]

Oh that guy was as jaded as us, no question. He just hasn't been for two three four five sixish years.

[Yoru]

Oh that guy was as jaded as us, no question. He just hasn't been for two three four five sixish years.

I dunno. I managed to work my way through the whole thing and it read pretty wide-eyed to me. Been around the block, sure; jaded, not so sure.

[schild]

Oh that guy was as jaded as us, no question. He just hasn't been for two three four five sixish years.

I dunno. I managed to work my way through the whole thing and it read pretty wide-eyed to me. Been around the block, sure; jaded, not so sure.

I'm completely jaded and I still have hope for the future - more than, well, most everyone I know. Why can't those go hand in hand?

[Akkori]

I once again offer my services to create the perfect MMO. SOmeone give me 20 million dollars and I will get right on it. I promise to cater to all of the various playstyles!

[Soln]

well, in all honesty I did try to read it but had to go to bed.  But I intended to look at the rest of it this morning.  Ah well, was just having fun.  Just reprint the article and move it to the Design/Dev forum away from the jaded industry chat.  Peopel can discuss there.

[Signe]

I miss him.   

[sarius]

P.S.  While I encourage all the constructive critism that you guys can deal, what is up with all the flames?(Not directed at the person that I quoted here)  I mean, is this the same as a public MMO board?  When the name of this site was brought to my attention, I was under the impression that it was a mature website, that could give some feedback on the article.  Yet it seems quite a few peeps are more worried about me or my creditenials.  Would it not be more intelligent to comment on the article?  While i have seen 12 year olds match wits with other 12 year olds on public MMO boards, I thought this site was different.  If it makes anyone feel any better, just think of me as a 60 year old acoholic, that uses drugs and does not have a life outside of my cardboard box.(I use the computer at the local library to access the internet)  You will not get me to dabble in a piss contest or get me to try to describe myself to your satisfaction, stick with the topic and explain what mistakes I have made.   If you need some attention or want to have a flame contest send me an email
mcvoll@yahoo.com
and I will let one of the kids play with ya :)

Flames??  You think these are flames?  I think you should learn to appreciate the "flames" and learn from the (rather weak) assaults.  Some of us come here to be flamed! :)

[Dren]

I miss him.   

What are you throwing at him?

[Signe]

Flowers and kisses and these little sparkly bits of stuff I found under the chainsaw.  He should come back and be mean to someone.  Then he'd be accepted.  Why aren't the people who wander in here by mistake more mean?  We should send ForumBot 8.0 beta out to teach them our ways.  We could be happy together.

[tazelbain]

P.S.  While I encourage all the constructive critism that you guys can deal, what is up with all the flames?(Not directed at the person that I quoted here)  I mean, is this the same as a public MMO board?  When the name of this site was brought to my attention, I was under the impression that it was a mature website, that could give some feedback on the article.  Yet it seems quite a few peeps are more worried about me or my creditenials.  Would it not be more intelligent to comment on the article?

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
This isn't the lodge. We don't sit around drinking a hundred-year-old Scotch and say "Indoubality."

[Ironwood]

I do.  However, I try to spell correctly while I'm at it.

Sometimes there's just too much 100yr old for that.

[Broughden]

P.S.  While I encourage all the constructive critism that you guys can deal, what is up with all the flames?(Not directed at the person that I quoted here)  I mean, is this the same as a public MMO board?  When the name of this site was brought to my attention, I was under the impression that it was a mature website, that could give some feedback on the article.  Yet it seems quite a few peeps are more worried about me or my creditenials.  Would it not be more intelligent to comment on the article?

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
This isn't the lodge. We don't sit around drinking a hundred-year-old Scotch and say "Indoubality."

Yeah but we should start. I like drunkenly shouting "Indoubitably!" after drinking Scotch.  Oooh oooh can we get F13 smoking jackets too!

[Megrim]

What's up on June 27th?

National HIV Testing Day!  I can't wait.

Think positive!  :-D

[WayAbvPar]

I missed his article, but his tanktop link was titillating. He can't be all bad!

[Xanthippe]

I came in late, and didn't get to read his post.  From what I gather, it was  and 
followed by  and then a dash of    and the occasional 

So, where's the  ?

[HaemishM]

IMO, as stated, to me it is a simple failure of developers to deliver what the customer truly wants.

You're talking about a genre birthed not by the needs of customers, but by the needs of the developers (whether those needs be an academic experiment with "godhood", a simple need to just make cash, or some other fucked up personal reason). It's going to take awhile before the priorities are reversed.

That's a generalization, of course, but I usually see a difference in what motivation, for example, Sid Meier or Miyamoto has for designing a game, and how and why [insert MMO dev here  ] makes an MMO. In the MMO world, it's all about them (and whenever things are "fun" here and there, it's just a fortunate byproduct to reach their original, selfish goal).

  The recent 6 million+ subscriber base of WOW already has a few devs saying "well if we only had 10% of WOW subscribers we would be a success".  Why aim for the bottom 10%?  

Because that's profitable, and not everyone needs to have the largest subscriber e-peen in order to be a success. The sooner developers and publishers figure that out, the better.

A point you make is that the genre was born out of the needs of the developers, however this has changed, EQ2 tried to push the title with no PvP and down it went, DDO tried to force grouping, wtf?  

Neither game has "gone down" and both are still going. "Going down" is the path of games like Earth and Beyond, 10-6 and other failed, closed down games. As long as someone's paying money, they only suck, they haven't gone down.

This is exactly what I am saying, these are not the days of UO and Everquest so why are the devs still trying to push like titles?  Right now there are more players that feel "stuck" in WOW then you can imagine, what is the problem with pushing an MMO to the next level?  When I mentioned "The Perfect MMO", I did not mean an MMO without flaw, I simply meant an MMO that is far above and beyond what is currently on the market and in development.

No problem, if it isn't your money being pissed away on SWG-style innovation that is borken from the gettie. Also, developing is hard. And whatnot.

P.S. Stop writing for multiplayerstrategies.com. It'll help a lot.

[Hoax]

So I've been playing Gunbound right?  The funny thing about Gunbound is, sometimes when a person misses their first shot they will just quit.  Some people wait till they have fucked up 3 shots then they quit without a word.  Quitting the board because nobody liked your first post is the same thing.  I really wonder what will happen to personal accountability in a generation or three thanks to the internet.  Even in MMO's I've noticed that guild hopping is becoming more and more common.

Anyways I haven't read the article because it started out like so many other articles about MMO's and it was long as fuck.  I hate to say it but threads that try to tackle every aspect of MMO's are just pointless.  Threads about crafting, economy, combat-systems, loot, spawn distributions, pvp, endgame content, raids whatever.  All interesting, worth reading and fun to participate in.  A single thread that tries to "fix" everything about MMO's at once is never a good idea and always turns into a mess.

Something good has come out of this whole thing though.  I'm intrigued by Stray's rockstar developer theory.  So basically right now the developer's making MMO's get too attached to their "vision" of the world that they forget to add any fun?  Sadly I can buy that.  It also helps explain why these fucktards never listen to anyone during any stage of testing.

[stray]

Mongoose should really stick around and post again. I've seen worse. We've all seen worse.

[edit]

Scratch that. I've been worse.

[bhodi]

I'm actually surprised our brief 30s of fame didn't get more people to register/post. Maybe it's too soon, I wonder if we got a lot of registrants (is that a word?) that are just lurking now.

[Righ]

I'm actually surprised our brief 30s of fame didn't get more people to register/post. Maybe it's too soon, I wonder if we got a lot of registrants (is that a word?) that are just lurking now.

No.

Code:

Offline  solcott                Foozle  2006-06-14  1  	
Offline  Mongoose               Foozle  2006-06-14  7 	
Offline  Phosphoros             Foozle  2006-06-14  0 	
Offline  ForumBot 0.8 beta      Foozle  2006-06-15  2 	
Offline  brownjuice             Foozle  2006-06-15  0 

   

[Mongoose]

  The recent 6 million+ subscriber base of WOW already has a few devs saying "well if we only had 10% of WOW subscribers we would be a success".  Why aim for the bottom 10%?  A point you make is that the genre was born out of the needs of the developers, however this has changed, EQ2 tried to push the title with no PvP and down it went, DDO tried to force grouping, wtf?  This is exactly what I am saying, these are not the days of UO and Everquest so why are the devs still trying to push like titles?  Right now there are more players that feel "stuck" in WOW then you can imagine, what is the problem with pushing an MMO to the next level?  When I mentioned "The Perfect MMO", I did not mean an MMO without flaw, I simply meant an MMO that is far above and beyond what is currently on the market and in development.

P.S.  While I encourage all the constructive critism that you guys can deal, what is up with all the flames?(Not directed at the person that I quoted here)  I mean, is this the same as a public MMO board?  When the name of this site was brought to my attention, I was under the impression that it was a mature website, that could give some feedback on the article.  Yet it seems quite a few peeps are more worried about me or my creditenials.  Would it not be more intelligent to comment on the article?

Why aim for the bottom 10%? Money. Game publishers are about money. Many game dev studios are about money - someone has to write Madden 2007, the Da Vinci Code game and all the other drek that random people are willing to throw cash at to get made. MMOs are a golden goose if you can develop them properly; a steady subscriber base of 600,000 (or hell, 100,000 if you only want to count the North American market) paying $15/month is a lot of revenue.

It's nice to say that devs should suffer for their art and produce awesome, innovative, rock-solid, fun games. I'd also like politicians to be honest, industrialists to work for the public good, and so on. As long as money is in the equation, someone will be In It For The Money, which means they're not going to give a flying fig about what you think so long as a good crowd ponies up the dough.

But regardless, Greed will save Teldar Paper. Why? Because if the proportion of the population that games expands, then the amount of money flowing around in the games industry expands. Most of it will go to EA, Vivendi and the other fat cats churning out stuff most people around this forum wouldn't use to wipe their ass. But that means the number of people who get bored of that stuff and look deeper into it, scraping around indies and maybe making some amateur games themselves - that population will grow in positive proportion of the mass market. People need to get exposed to stuff to get turned on to it, and that's what the mass market guys are good at - putting accessible games into a lot of living rooms.

I see no evidence provided to support your claim that EQ2 is going 'down in flames'; if you believe MMOGChart, it's hovering around 200k-250k; not a WoW success, but that's still cash money flowing into the bank. Further, I see no evidence to support your claim that the market is 'bored' of WoW. Anecdotally, I know several folks who have been playing WoW since release, raid every week, and are hot in the pants over the next patch. I know some folks who have quit, and an equal number who recently got turned on to it. And since anecdotal evidence is essentially bunk - again, look at their announced numbers or at whatever other source you believe, such as the weekly top selling games lists. WoW is consistently in the top 10, and the subscriber growth rate is still climbing. Consumers are not particularly dumb with their money; if they're sick of WoW, they will unsub and go do something else. What metric are you measuring "stuck-feeling-ness" by?

As for the reactions... you posted a dissertation of broad assertions about what "The Perfect MMO" would be, completely disregarding the realization that games are entertainment, and what's entertaining for Jimmy McCatass is not entertaining for Sally the Wife Who Plays Kingdom Hearts Occasionally. Further, many of your statements were so vague as to be worthless. Companies should hire good people, but maybe they should hire some new people too so they get new ideas. Either implement crafting or don't. Fix bugs.

What were you expecting - the forum to fall to our knees and fellate you for the (dubious) wisdom of what seems to be essentially another guy who writes articles on the internet? Not even Raph or Lum, both of whom have vast reservoirs of credibility capital, could get away with posting that tract as Wisdom without a lot of folks here pointing and laughing. Because, really, what you brought to the table were some stale generalizations about the industry and business, disgused as 'insights', and then peppered them with arbitrary, context-less game design decisions about what would be the Ultimate MMO (for you).

Thank you, drive through.

(600k * $15) is a lot, however (6 million * $15) is A LOT more.  I understand the only purpose of creating an MMO is for the profit of the monthly fees, but if you are going to do it, why not go for the most subscribers?  Why piss around with 100k-600k peeps when, with a little creativity and common sense, you can easily have 1-6 million +?  When you constantly aim low, you will constantly miss.(Unless you have a really big gun and cannot hold the damn thing when you fire, like having a 12 year old fire a 12 gauge, LOFL) 

  EQ2 is in flames in comparison to their original hopes.  This was the title that was supposed to be evenly matched with WOW, however 250k does not compete with 6 million, why do you think they actually decided to throw PvP into EQ2?  A failure to you it is not, after all you bring up the fact that it is making money.  However if I was aiming to compete with another title, and just got my ass handed to me like EQ2 did by WOW, then to me I would have failed.

  OMG players are stuck in WOW, you are looking at nothing else then numbers!  You need to talk to the gamers themselves and get their feelings on their experience.  "They will unsub and go somewhere else” Yeah where?  There is no competition to WOW, which is my entire point of the article I wrote, instead of evolution, Devs keep coming out with the same craptacular releases.  Go back to MMOGchart and look at the populations of all MMO's on/since WOW's release, the only games that dropped for WOW was Lineage and Lineage2 and that was less then 1.5 million, so where did the other 4.5 million come from?  Of course you had a ton of noobs enter the genre based upon the Warcraft and Blizzard reputation, but you also had a large chunk of those that join that were simply waiting for another decent MMO to be developed. 
 
  WOW has not been in the top 10 games sold either, (unless you are counting the 50,000 copies bought by gold farmers to replace the accounts that were banned, yes this is added for sarcasm) not for quite awhile, yes you constantly see the expansion pack for WOW in the top 10, but that in itself is another nightmare waiting to happen.  You get what? (No new classes)  A new area and 10 more levels?  With the current majority of the population already at the end game with at least one character, that is most likely already equipped with level 70-83 items?  How long will it take to burn through to level 70?  A few weeks at BEST, then they will be stuck right where they are now.  Blizzard had mentioned that they wanted the initial release of WOW have a level cap 70, but VU forced the release to compete with EQ2.  So look what happened, 2 years after the release and you are now simply having the content that was supposed to be in the game on the day of release!  That is not evolution, that is desperation.

  Yes a lot of the statements were vague, I was trying to keep the number of words under 3,500 as that is the standard to have it printed in a few mags.  I had chopped the article down from 14k to 7k words, so here I will agree that overall the article was "lacking", however there was a simple point that I was trying to make.  So yes, I screwed it up and should have either gone with 3500, or just released it with the 14k.  Would you actually take the time to read the article if it was 14k?

  What did I expect?  Peeps to fall to their knees? (LOFL) No, I simply wanted feedback on what should be added, removed, or changed.  Only when you can add positive influence to the info does it make it worth more.  I do not look for respect or kudos here, as I have no time or desire for mental masturbation. (I have a wife and children for that)  To me it just seems that Devs are throwing away huge amounts of time and money, and yet they still fail to achieve their goals.  Somewhere, someone has to be asking themselves "Why did this title not reach the expected numbers?"  I was just trying to send them a "Mind Of Mencia - De De DEE"

  By the way have you even played WOW to the end game?  Not to cut Bliz on what they promised, that is still not in the game such as housing, and an actual end game, etc...  But the game has nothing at the end, the entire PvP system is a joke, you do not even compete against the opposing side, you compete against each other for points, and if you do not play 60-80 hours a week you will not hit R14, and as stated you have to slit your buddy’s throat to do it.  Look at the video's that are being made week by week, you will see a ton of players that are deleting their characters and trashing their accounts.  These are not noobs that just hit 60 and wanted to make a statement, these are greatly respected players that have been around since day one and just got sick and tired of all the empty promises that never happened in WOW.

  If you have a car and like to drive, then you drive it, even when that car becomes a piece of crap you will still drive it, less you drive nothing and walk.  However when a new and better car comes out, you will buy the better car.  In the MMO industry, there is a general failure to make a better car, which is my point.  There is no lack of money or interest in the MMO genre as a cash cow, just a failure of understanding what the customer wants, which is leading to craptacular cars being built, that is why no one is buying them, and that is why peeps are still driving WOW.  There is nothing to hurt WOW until next year when Mythic releases WAR. (If it is not pushed back)  I have faith in Mythic, as they actually have improved on DAOC and to a point, do listen to their players.  WOW is an above average game and very enjoyable until you hit 60, then there is nothing there, and players will not see this until they hit 60.  Don’t get me wrong I am not a Mythic fanboi, just that I see nothing else at the moment…


FORE!

[Mongoose]

It was suggested that I post this article on this website by a new acquaintance

Cheddar set you up!

hopefully an admin will simply delete the thread.  If not I will see if I can delete it myself, thanks for the heads-up!

That's the noob move, not the original posting. You had the most active thread on the board and for better or worse, many people will read your work, so if you believe in what you wrote, put it back.

  No reason to put it back, the entire point was lost.  If it is true that the peeps here are well aware of the MMO industries problems, and simply needed someone to spice up the forums a little, you will have plenty of entertaining material to read in the upcoming days.

[Mongoose]

This should be good.  Can you give a little intro (more than logging your hours) as to who you are.  This will help us understand things a bit more!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Seriously, jesus.  You guys chased him off faster than I thought.  I owe someone 5 bucks now.

  I'll stay, you paypal me $2.50 and keep $2.50 for yourself.(LOFL)

[Akkori]

Dont ya'll diss SWG now.... in the realm of "potential", I have never seen a game with more.

and stuff...