A Catass by any other name...

[edlavallee]

Back to the "Why shouldn't short-session-time players get access to lewtz like long-session- time players?"  There's no good reason they shouldn't.   Quests, 7-10 man content, whatever (in RPGs, which like Gabe I assumed the whole discussion was initially about.)  to let them access the same stuff over-time.   It just shouldn't take LESS time over-all than large-group (which in itself takes a long time.) or else why have large-group, and if you're not going to do large-group why try for Massive.

I don't care if it takes more time -- just let it be consumed in smaller time chunks.

I went through Sunken Temple the other day and it embodies what I like least about games of this particular mold -- pretty cool the first time around, good puzzle with the snake statues that need to be turned on, but the 2nd, 3rd, 100th time time through that place is interminably long and needlessly tedious. Our group is fairly well disciplined yet it took more time than I care to give in one session. If it could have been broken up into smaller sessions over a period of time then I would be more happy.

[HaemishM]

I just don't think you want to play MMORPG's.  You want to play at most 6-player games with chat clients that let you talk to all your friends.  Seems like Trillian and Diablo II/Warcraft III/Halo/whatever is your optimal "MMORPG".

No, I want MOG's. Or MORPG's. The MASSIVE part is just reaching. There's no good goddamn reason to shove 3000 players into the same server community other than to be able to brag about numbers. But server populations of 600-1000? That's right about the sweet spot. Seriously. I don't see anything that having a large community of 3,000 concurrent users (translating into about 24,000 accounts and between 24,000 - 150,000 characters) on a server solves anything. It makes things worse, because it actually ends up stifling community development as opposed to fostering it. What happens is that most people withdraw into their cliques, with a inbred sub-community numbering around 100, maybe 200. These people only interact with each other and a few other friends. So you have hordes of little insular sub-communities running around ignoring everyone else unless those other people interact negatively (kill-stealing, spawn-hopping).

There's a sweet spot there in terms of gameplay, server costs, bandwidth and network usage that no one seems willing to find. All the devs want to do is pack as many folks onto one server as possible to cut down hardware costs, even if that means impacting the playability (lag, queues). A balance between cost issues and community issues needs to be found. Just falling back on EQ1 for a moment, EQ1's server community was never more alive than when concurrent users were capped at 1500 (right around Kunark). Beyond that number, all the little sub-communities began to withdraw into their raid shells.

As for persistence, all that has given us is static, boring worlds. The only thing that needs to be persistent is personal statistics, and perhaps some items (not all). But the world needs to change, the quests need to change (and I don't mean just adding MORE quests), and everything else needs to change. It doesn't have to be fast change. People need to be shook up. They need to create an alt and find all those quests they leveled up on gone and others in their place, to maintain some sense of replayability. Instead, the devs just tack on more at the "endgame" justifying it by saying "Everyone gets to maximum level sooner or later." That's a copout. Of course they get to maximum level. That doesn't mean you should just add levels. Encourage the making of alts by altering the level landscape, making the journey up a different journey instead of a more efficient repetition of the same road.

But again, THESE THINGS ARE HARD. And since there is money to be made iterating on a proven formula, no one wants to try something different. I'm not blaming them, but I am saying that if they want my dollars, they have to try harder.

[HaemishM]

Exactly. I understand the desire to be protected from the randomness of potential catasses and to have boutique experiences balanced for one's own lifestyle. But as discussed, there's not a huge marketshare for that right now when you look at MMORPGs in general.

I call bullshit. There's a huge marketshare for non-timesinky games, they just won't look or play like the hacky-slash shit we've been used to playing as MMOG's. But MMOG devs have to think outside the level grind, fantasy genre, retreaded single-player RPG's with chat mindset that makes up 99% of all MMOG's right now.

[StGabe]

I think that you are describing, Haemish, already exists.  It is called XBox Live.  Or Battlenet.  And it still has problems and limitations of course.

I call bullshit. There's a huge marketshare for non-timesinky games, they just won't look or play like the hacky-slash shit we've been used to playing as MMOG's.

What's the justification for this?  I think that plenty of worlds are going outside the box.  Puzzle Pirates for example.  Or ATitD.  And while they're making a buck they're not demonstrating a "huge marketshare".  I think this is just the standard fallacy of projecting one's own desires onto the market at large.  For me it's no longer a surprise that what I want isn't mainstream.  I'm not mainstream in any other market, why should MMORPG's be the exception?

As for the players per server "sweetspot" I also think that you have no justification for your desires here.  I think that we see high populations per server exactly because this is the sweetspot, economically.  Smaller servers with smaller playerbases requires more overall maintenance per player.  The only MMORPG, fwiw, that is approaching your model is Second Life which averages a ridiculously low number of players per server.  But it does this basically by renting out server space at a prices that dwarf what players pay for games like WoW.  There was a recent, interesting discussion about this sparked when the CEO of the company that does Puzzle Pirates called this model unsustainable.  Too lazy to find a link.

[HaemishM]

I think that you are describing, Haemish, already exists.  It is called XBox Live.  Or Battlenet.  And it still has problems and limitations of course.

Good mass market MMOG's of the future will be based on an X-Box Live type of service, not a 1 game = $15/month. Extrapolate the Station Pass into something that doesn't suck balls.

I call bullshit. There's a huge marketshare for non-timesinky games, they just won't look or play like the hacky-slash shit we've been used to playing as MMOG's.

What's the justification for this?  I think that plenty of worlds are going outside the box.  Puzzle Pirates for example.  Or ATitD.  And while they're making a buck they're not demonstrating a "huge marketshare".  I think this is just the standard fallacy of projecting one's own desires onto the market at large. 

Justification? Mobile phone games. Parlor games like Pogo.com. The pretty decent influx of gambling sites. Essentially, everything that isn't an MMOG right now, only projected 5-10 years in the future with a generation that grew up playing video games of some kind either casually or seriously. The emergence of online, mass market consoles. The fact that video games make as much revenue as first-run movies, only with genres and subject matter that has never been mainstream (fantasy, shooters, etc.)

But as Darniaq said, the people who make the mints at this kind of thing won't be the ones making bank now, because they can't see how it would be profitable.

[StGabe]

Justification? Mobile phone games. Parlor games like Pogo.com...

That's not sufficient.  Sure, casual gaming is big and will continue to grow.  That's not an argument, however, that casual gaming will merge into the genre of MMORPG's.  Puzzle Pirates is a data point that doesn't confirm your (or Darniaq's) notions.  Puzzle Pirates actually did a lot of internet advertising in casual domains and they still didn't pick up that much of a fanbase.  I think that we will see casual game services, like Pogo, continuing to pop up.  I think there is great potential for that market.  However, I think these services may offer some virtual worldy features like showing off your trophy room or letting you decorate a house to invite people to, generally I don't think they will be much like all the things that I think the word "MMORPG" means to us.  We're looking at the next generation of Yahoo Games and Pogo here, not the next generation of EQ/WoW/et al.  It will stress player-matching and chat with a bit of profile customization but will not offer a whole lot of persistence or world which is really what makes an MMORPG.  IMO.

Good mass market MMOG's of the future will be based on an X-Box Live type of service, not a 1 game = $15/month. Extrapolate the Station Pass into something that doesn't suck balls.

So yes, I definitely think that online gaming services will grow.  I just think that this will happen in parallel to, and not on top of or instead of what we now know of as MMORPG's.

edit: grammar typo

[Venkman]

COGs have issues of their own. Great for publishers and aggregators, but the model of content development still needs a lot of fleshing out.

But as Darniaq said, the people who make the mints at this kind of thing won't be the ones making bank now, because they can't see how it would be profitable.

Yep. And while you called bullshit on me earlier, we do actually agree. I said there was no opportunity for the boutique microworld right now, specifically because of what I go into below (to clarify the earlier post).

Oh. I assumed he meant that when he said the next big thing won't come from the "current development community" -- Which, to my mind, meant those who come from and/or learned their lessons from MUDs.

Darniaq, can you clarify?

I actually meant that the next big thing won't come from current MMORPG developers, themselves either from MUDs or building games off of the same lessons of MUDs. It'll come from totally left field stuff, maybe not even based on a singular-focus on game-directed achievements either. Sorta like what Merusk said.

If you're interested in that sort of trending, it's important to not just stick with what SOE and the like are doing. There'll always be a place for that of course, just as ATITD can exist alongside WoW. But I keep going back to one record WoW broke: the number of U.S-based MMORPG accounts. They effectively doubled it by themselves. To 3 million, and by pulling in players of very similar playstyles to those already here. That just isn't all that much when looked at from the scope of, say, casual online games or MySpace.

The "next big thing" to me isn't going to come from this genre. It's going to be a new title that's called "MMO" for the easy messaging, but which is a different experience targeting someone different. It may not be a single experience at all, but rather a collection of them a player is free to jump around. While there's SOE's Station Pass as one example, it's still "try games that are/not Everquest in style". Experientially similar to different from EQ is a very narrow scope from which to start.

Maybe it'll be a license-based compendium of massive experiences. Maybe it'll be a distributed world, like a beehive hosted experience that builds from grass roots, like MySpace, or XBLA, or RealArcade, with a 3D client. Maybe it'll be a Far Eastern manga-based title since Manga are starting to take off. It'll probably not target current 18-34 year old males either, but rather, a larger group with looser purse strings and greater buying power (like today's tween girls and teens). And it'll probably not have the same sadistic time-sinky crap that clearly defines the niche subgroup of this already relatively niche genre (in the U.S.).

[StGabe]

Another important datapoint while there are probably more people playing solitaire/tetris/etc. right now than WoW, most of them aren't paying anything to do so.  The revenue of WoW alone is (by rough estimate) right around the revenue of the entire US casual games market.

[Venkman]

If you look at the PC side of the market only. XBLA arcade though features a much higher conversion rate, for a subscription base projected to be 6mil by next year. Being a closed system targeting traditional spenders with a broader appealing service helps them of course.

But putting that aside, we can't discount the price to deliver WoW. Whether it was $60mil or $100mil, it was still car-fulls of cash almost no other company either has or would be willing to spend on one project (though iirc Driv3r cost around $50mil... yea... good spend there). Compare that to the cumulative cost to deliver every demo-to-purchase COG title, and I think WoW would still beat them all.

Finally, COGs themselves aren't really a good comparison as they current exist, because most are sold on a traditional retailer model: a single environment in which to browse hundreds of titles. When they start getting connected, when there's some sort of community, when there's a metaphorical consistency between the titles, then we'll maybe see the benefits of having roped in millions of tweens/teens and 35+ adult women. Puzzle Pirates started that way, but the metaphor doesn't really match the mechanic well. They may be on the right track though. Maybe with Bang Howdy! Maybe Gaia Online. Will be fun to watch.

[HaemishM]

Another important datapoint while there are probably more people playing solitaire/tetris/etc. right now than WoW, most of them aren't paying anything to do so.  The revenue of WoW alone is (by rough estimate) right around the revenue of the entire US casual games market.

Because there isn't anything to pay FOR. Yet. Persistency is one of the keys to building that "reason to pay."

[StGabe]

Because there isn't anything to pay FOR.

Uhh...

AOL Games Channel - onlinegames.channel.aol.com
arcadetown - www.arcadetown.com
Bigfishgames - www.bigfishgames.com
Boonty Games - www.boonty.com
Pogo - www.pogo.com
Gamefiesta - www.gamefiesta.com
Gamehouse - www.gamehouse.com
Grab.com - www.grab.com
iWin - www.iwin.com
MSN Gaming Zone - zone.msn.com
Realarcade - www.realarcade.com
Reflexive - www.reflexive.com
Shockwave - www.shockwave.com
Trygames - www.trygames.com
Yahoo Games - games.yahoo.com
Zylom - www.zylom.com

edit: and especially relevant:
www.puzzlepirates.com
www.banghowdy.com

All sites selling casual games (several with online service).  Hundreds of different titles  for $19.99 a pop, or less.  The problem is that the average casual title "converts" about 1% of the players who download it into customers.  A lot of people are interested in playing casual games but not interested in paying for them.  They'll take the free trial/service as far as it goes and then look for something else.  The financial committment of a more extensive service isn't necessarily something that the market is ready to bear.  The paying market is growing but I don't think it is growing as fast as some people would like to believe.

And the barrier to entry to create a lot of these titles is low enough that the competition will always be stiff.  Sudoku is wildly popular.  Sure.  And some people are making money off of it.  But that's a lot harder to do when www.websudoku.com exists, is free, and already offers pretty much everything that one would want out of a Sudoku game.  Sadly, instead of heading towards quality the market is likely to spiral into heavy licensing and marketing because those are elements that publishers can buy, control and leverage in order to get and keep customers.  There's a strong argument that the current indie casual market is an anomaly and that the market will eventually homogenize and head towards the mediocre, dumbed-down bullshit that take over most large markets.

This path actually isn't all that different from the path that educational games took.

[HaemishM]

You misunderstand me. They aren't buying it because the for-sale offerings have nothing to justify the cost of buying it. There's no there there. Why buy a slighty shinier version of Solitaire when it's already in Windows?

Persistence is one of the things that can be offered, as can community. As these features are strengthened and enhanced, you'll see more adoption.

[StGabe]

I already feel like I commented on this.  I don't think casual players want persistence and I haven't seen any evidence that this is true (Puzzle Pirates hasn't proved me wrong, that's for sure).  Where they do want persistence it will only be in very small doses -- changing their avatar and keeping tracks of wins versus losses.  I do think they want community.  I don't think that community makes something an MMORPG.  They want friends lists, and chat channels and maybe even something like guilds.  And ladders and tournaments and stuff like that.  But that is Yahoo Games 2.0 or Pogo 2.0 -- not WoW 2.0.  WoW 2.0 will, I think, be a clearly separate entity that continues to do the same sorts of things that the mainstream MMORPG market is doing now.  It will also make a lot more per head because it has a more hardcore audience.  Yahoo games 2.0 will likely be dependent on product placement and ad revenue because it will be too hard to get someone to pay $19.99 for a Bejeweled clone.

So I agree that the casual market will grow and collect communities.  But I see no reason to conflate this with MMORPG's.

But anyway, what are you going to do if you MMORPG'ize casual games?  Add content to be earned over time by playing games?  A treadmill? *gasp* I thought that's what this market was going to somehow avoid.  If there isn't something like this then why is it going to be compelling versus the standalone or community-only versions?

[Venkman]

Evolution is not going to come by keeping COGs and MMOGs arbitrarily separate. Puzzle Pirates is a good example of a direct combination, though I think them directly combining a persistent world with Pirate theming with integrated mini-games that only bear some resemblance to pirates is an issue. So take that a step further and create the consistency of metaphor.

SWG was arguably a world with many different mini-games within it. Most had major issues, but this stands as an example of an attempt to create different games for different people within a self-consistent world.

Switch it around to RealArcade, grab a few match-3 puzzles, some pathfinding ones and maybe an action-like title or two. Wrap them all in a theme and throw a mulitplayer graphical client on the front end. You'd end up with something similar.

Or add a graphical front end to XBLA

Or do so with Diablo II

This is the new thinking I feel is emerging. The old way was to spend tens of millions to create some perpetually-buggy yet infinitely scalable and ownable graphics engine you hope to pay down with box sales and support with subscriptions. That's not the future though, far from it. The costs are too high on all levels, so the rules had to be changed.

They aren't buying it because the for-sale offerings have nothing to justify the cost of buying it.

This is not a small industry. 1% generates a lot of cash. And with XBLA posting 25% average conversion (almost 60% for Geometry Wars), even though the games are half the retail price (based on the cost of Points and their value), they're likely making more money per title sold there than that same title sold on all other aggregator sites combined.

Yes, you can rope someone in with persistence and the vague promise of constantly updated content. But the person you grabbed is not from a huge crowd of people. King of niche is still niche. Appealing to that player with that level of immersion guarantees a narrow group.

COGs are diversional play though, something you do in between everything else. Kids treat it a bit differently than adults of course, but even to them it's not about one game. It's about being able to sample so many games from a constrantly growing and changing library. It lets them personalize the experience by seeing and learning new things (though don't mention the "learning" part to them ;) ). It's why one of the bigger MMOGs for them is Club Penguin. This is not a grind2raid experience. It's a Flash-based MMO with mini-COG-like games to play alone or with others, a microeconomy and ways to gain rewards and buy stuff to customize your dwelling(s). Sound familiar?

Those kids are the future and they're not playing WoW (as much).

[StGabe]

This is not a small industry.

Like I said: it's an industry with a revenue roughly on par with the revenue WoW alone. RealArcade, probably the biggest site in the US, had a revenue of 56 million last year.  Compare that with WoW.  There's lots of growth going on and RealArcade is doing well.  But the rest of the PC/Console market still dwarfs the casual market.  When considering Live Arcade's conversion rate you also have to consider number of actual downloads.  RealArcade has roughly 750,000 downloads per day (with about 2% of those ending in some form of sale -- although their subscription model confuses the numbers -- going by their revenue total they still seem to be averaging about 1% of retail price per download).  I doubt Live Arcade is doing anything near that volume.  With lower volume games it is common to see higher conversion rates (basically because a much higher % of your downloaders are serious about the game, it's genre, etc.) so the comparison isn't that surprising.  I do think that Live Arcade is doing pretty well and expect to continue to do so -- but I think you need to take its early numbers with a grain of salt.

You guys could be right.  But as a person in the casual games industry, and having followed the market quite a bit, it's my opinion that:

1) casual gamers (as in those playing Bejeweled clones, solitaire, etc.) want extremely simple and accessible experiences and won't need or want "worlds" to put these in.  Those who want worlds will actually be a small minority of the overall casual market.
2) it's very common to take recent growth of the casual market and run wild with ideas that aren't justified.  The actual size, in terms of sales, of the casual market is usually overestimated and while it is still growing well, this growth isn't enough to make the overly optimistic estimates true anytime soon.

[HaemishM]

Ok, so RealArcade only made $56 million last year. How much did it cost them to MAKE the games and run the service? Probably a fuckload less than it took to create and maintain WoW. And it likely takes a shitton less continuing development dollars because they aren't constantly having to add new dungeons that take months for a team of 20 or so to build.

I'm not saying that casual gamers are the way to make continuing revenue streams in the millions and billions. I'm saying these things can be profitable, for smaller investments than what we are seeing in current MMOG's, and total, they'll dwarf the current MMOG market. Even the MMOG I'm talking about is a niche compared to these kinds of numbers. But it's a larger niche than grind-intensive, power-stratified Diku MMOG's. And the potential for crossover is huge, but it's going to take a fundamental shift in thinking for MMOG devs to capitalize on it. You have to move away from subscription-based pricing, and $100 million dollar budgets, and layers upon layers of expensive shiny graphics.

I'm not sure why you want to downplay the success Puzzle Pirates had. These guys went from having no publisher and only being sold direct on the Internet to being a profitable enough enterprise that they got a publisher to put their game on retail shelves AND were able to create another separate game that's soon to be released. Just like A Tale in the Desert, that is a ginormous success story, not because they got WoW-type numbers, but because they made a profitable enterprise from fuckall. And though ATitD may be grindy, it's certainly nothing like the Diku-formula. Eve is an even bigger success, and that game is the anti-MMOG in terms of content and gameplay mechanics. Do all of these games offer something for the hardcore? Sure. But they don't focus 99% of their development assets on content that only 1% of the population will see, and yet each game is still a challenge.

I just want MMOG developers to follow THOSE models instead of the SOE/Blizzard model of spend a shitton of money to try to be #1 big top Joe boss of the subscription world.

[Venkman]

Gabe, that's why I specify a few things:

1- Investment and Guaranteed Potential

It is a lot less of an investment to make a COG (though nobody in the industry calls them that, I'm just an acronym hound), even a series of COGs, than it is to make one MMORPG. Most of the game developers out there can't make an MMOG without partnering with someone who provides them the suite of tools and lots of expertise on hosting.

WoW is not a relevant comparison. They are unique for a whole bunch of different reasons, all of which I've (and others have) mentioned before. Their budget was much larger, their autonomy much greater, their IP much stronger, their retail support much deeper, their advertising spend from VUG much larger, and the worldwide relationships more accessible. There's not a company I can think of that has all the same elements to the same degree. Somebody will beat them, but they won't do so by taking them on directly.

You sure you're not being a bit blinded by the success of WoW? It's not an arguable success of course. It's just that a model for success requires other people be able to actually follow it.

2- Target Age

Casual online games are predominately for adult women 35+. The types of games most played are incredibly different from anything this crowd here generally plays. The model for success in COG-space is also very different, between there and here and between companies themselves. Some companies rely on their portals. Others rely on being publishers of content. Still others rely on providing tools for people to make games, and services to host them. The bigger ones have many positions in the value chain (like RA). It's all fluid. There's no single model for success. The numbers you report don't take into account the residuals of the other places in the value chain.

But I'm not talking about that crowd. I'm talking about the next generation of players, the ones for which the internet is a foregone conclusion, where the distinctions between different types of content and channels of distribution don't matter and where there's no clear dilineation between an online life and a real world one. They see, they want, they can and do get. And they do so with friends, not really caring whether that friend is online or next to them.

They're not out there playing Zuma or Bejeweled. They don't stick with one experience for any direct purpose. They play and leave and do so in environments that give them plenty of options of truly different experiences (unlike the adults, who seem to defer to match-3 and pipes-like games ;) ).

3- Growth

This isn't about looking at XBLA since December and announcing the success 5 years out. It's not about taking the COG industry since 2001 and predicting all things will eventually be match-3 games. It's about trying to figure out who's going to be in the best position to generate the next big thing for the bigger group of players that will be here in five years.

Take today's typical 11 year old. Do you think they'll be spending four hours a night on some MC-of-the-day raid when they're 16? No. Friggin. Way.

Short term gain can be had by trying to feed the existing beast, but it's a highly competitive field that, as I said, doesn't operate very differently from your standard brick & mortar. Limited content, limited attention, required advertising and all benefits to the establishment. Sure the content providers may make good royalties on sales in some cases. But theirs is just one of hundreds of games rotated through a "top picks" list refreshed daily or weekly.

Long term gain isn't going to be had by adhering to that formula though. Many developers are already talking about the issues with the space, saying much the same thing they did in the retailer-dominated era.

[StGabe]

Here's what I see as a viable future for COG's as you call them:

Basically what we are going to see is online games collecting communities.  Consumer's want it and it makes sense for publishers.  It makes sense for publishers because a community has traction.  It keeps players entrenched in your system.  It adds value to games that are otherwise pretty cheap to reproduce.  To a lesser extent, I think we will see branding and rewards programs becoming more important.  This will be an attempt to further entrench users into the services offered by the various big players.  Branding will be in the form of creating brands that people synonomize with "COG" and in obtaining brands that will attract customers (such as obtaining the Monopoly brand and doing a Monopoly game).  Rewards programs will allow players small benefits in the service such as avatar customization but won't have any affect on the actual play of the games.

What these things won't do, is really have worlds or homes for people.  You probably disagree.  So why do I say this?  I say it because I think users will just be providing links to their MySpace (or to whatever services come after MySpace).  That makes a lot more sense overall for consumers and providers.  Why embed your game in a world that is going to be expensive to make and still not provide users the services that they already get from MySpace.  MySpace will just have to have access to plugins that let you show your "gamer score" or avatar or whatever from the game services you play.

The community aspects will be the biggest actual service.  They will let you play with singles your age, or fellow cancer survivors, or people who are learning German, or whatever.  This is really just an integration of IRC into Yahoo Games, but I think it will be powerful.

I don't think that casual players want or need anything beyond this.  Casual gamers, in my experience, want directed, short experiences.  They want to play their favorite game, be it Tetris or Bejewelled for sessions of 10m to 2 hours, with as little hassle as possible, and then go back to real life.  The only thing I think can really be added to this is c ommunity.  I do think that these services will make plenty of money (a lot or most of that from product placement and ad revenue) and will be a significant part of the game industry.  I don't think they will displace traditional gaming, however. 

And I don't see anything in this description that has really much at all to do with MMORPG's.  Maybe this has something to do with "Virtual Worlds" if you define them as vaguely and openly as say, Raph Koster does, but personally I don't think that such vague definitions are even that interesting.

Regarding costs, we will see that costs do in fact increase significantly.  Already a lot of the more successful casual titles (such as Huntsville) have budgets over half a million dollars.  On top of that, I fear that licensing and marketing will be increasingly important and neither of these are cheap.  It makes sense for publishers to push things this way as it allows them to control the market and provides high barriers to entry for competitors.  And, sadly, its a proven technique for gathering consumer attention and business.

[Venkman]

We mostly agree. I do see a virtual world component coming though, but again, not for the current audiences. What you don't find interesting, and admittedly what I didn't find interesting in Puzzle Pirates, could be compelling to the next gen players. It wouldn't be done the same way either.

MySpace is an example of just how much the younger folks are into personalization and community. They can get that because the tech and commonality has scaled so low 5 year olds can make sites. It will continue to scale. A common language for 3D web will emerge in a couple of years and scale to that level as well. Prior versions not really taking off could be for a number of reasons, including the information overload for previous-gen early adopters of so many other things, like us.

The emergence and ease of such technologies will breed acceptance of it as newer gen folks look for ways to make themselves unique. What we accept as basic flat electronic-page viewing today will be quaint in maybe as little as 5 years. The beauty of convergence.

Will that mean everyone who's playing an MMORPG today will move to Second Life and launch Zuma from the RealArcade building on Island 12, or that that WoW will integrate mini-games in boss encounters? No. There'll always be a place for what's being played right now because there's a lot of money being paid by a relatively hardcore niche of interested players, but the barrier is still fairly high (mostly about the time commitment and the singularity of experience) and still very much rooted in linear game experiences.

Basically, we already see the convergence between game and lifestyle, and this'll only continue.

[El Gallo]

In an interesting way, WoW is less casual than EQ.  Even though WoW requires much, much less time than EQ it requires much, much greater attention to the game than EQ did.  Two hours of eyes-utterly-glued-to-the-screen because of the constant motion and action of a WoW dungeon crawl vs six hours of kinda-sorta-paying-attention-once-in-a-while as my stationary group mindlessly processes blues in a broken EQ dungeon camp.

I think there will be substantial growth in the traditional MMO market.  But I also think there will be some non-fantasy, non-combat-oriented game that explodes onto the scene in the future.  But it will not require the kind of focused attention WoW does, it will require (at most) the attention that EQ did, or even less.  I really think that this game will be something along the lines of "Sims Online done right."  I've never played it, but it sounds like Animal Crossing has some mechanics that could be expanded on for a game like this.  I think it could be huge if done correctly. 

I don't care if it takes more time -- just let it be consumed in smaller time chunks.

I went through Sunken Temple the other day and it embodies what I like least about games of this particular mold -- pretty cool the first time around, good puzzle with the snake statues that need to be turned on, but the 2nd, 3rd, 100th time time through that place is interminably long and needlessly tedious. Our group is fairly well disciplined yet it took more time than I care to give in one session. If it could have been broken up into smaller sessions over a period of time then I would be more happy.

This is a lesson Blizzard has learned, but the players have not benefited much from because Blizzard is so fucking slow.  The released Scarlet Monastery, a dungeon broken down into 4 wings back during beta 2 (iirc, I think it was in in like feb or so of 2004).  Everyone said "great, we like this winged dungeon idea because it breaks dungeon crawls down into smaller chunks."  Blizzard said "sounds good to us, we'll apply this to our future dungeon designs."

The next future dungeon was Dire Maul, which was winged (the remaining dungeons being too far in development to redesign).  There haven't been any new ones since.  So very slow. 

[bhodi]

Naxx has wings. 4 of them, spiraling off from a central zone-in point. It's not casual now, but when the expansion comes out and people are level 70, I think it will be.

[Phred]

Naxx has wings. 4 of them, spiraling off from a central zone-in point. It's not casual now, but when the expansion comes out and people are level 70, I think it will be.

I really doubt that. Maybe by the 4th expansion but not the next one.

Most of the fights require much more coordination and paying attention than any previous dungeon, with a few exceptions, to be very open to casual players. MC is liable to be quite easy for post-expansion casuals to do pickup raids in but beyond that I don't see them happening. The first two fights in BWL will also keep out the casuals as well.

[bhodi]

I really doubt that. Maybe by the 4th expansion but not the next one.

Most of the fights require much more coordination and paying attention than any previous dungeon, with a few exceptions, to be very open to casual players. MC is liable to be quite easy for post-expansion casuals to do pickup raids in but beyond that I don't see them happening. The first two fights in BWL will also keep out the casuals as well.

I disagree. Insofar as I have seen, you have straight DPS bosses like patchwerk and bosses that only require good timing from a very small part of the raid (main tank, MC priests). Consider the way a tier2 equipped raid can steamroll through MC, then remember a year ago where you wiped on your first destroyer. That difference is just gear, experience, and blizzard easymode patches. No additional levels were added. You'll be able to power through the bosses in naxx just like you do in MC, especially after blizzard patches the content to make it more accessable to the casual player. No stats have been released but I fully expect level 70 blues to be better than the tier 1 epics. So imagine everyone is full tier 1, plus the extra talent points and HP for buffers. I think it's entirely possible.

[Merusk]

I agree with Bhodi on this.  MC is cake right now in so far that I've seen PUGs do it through at least Gehennas. (Coordination on Garr seems to pwn folks.)  These are groups of random folks in blues/ greens who've simply learned the dungeon, or know how to listen.   I doubt I'll see a PUG take-down Rag or Domo prior to the expansion, but it'll be a fairly regular occurrence afterwards.

I can't speak on BWL from an encounter standpoint, but Tier 1 equip is only a level 66 item.  Given the way items work, by the time folks ARE 66, wearing and wearing appropriate-level greens they'll have the equiv of a Tier 1 set.  (Which is where I take my amusement, watching people fuck each other or old guilds over for "teh shiny" without realizing they're cutting themselves short in the long-run.)   They shouldn't have a problem running BWL at level 70 in the same way folks do PUGs for MC or ZG right now.  In fact, if you get a group of blue-equipped 70's together, I'd wager you won't even need a full raid. (Provided they've got proper resists, but given the level disparity those resists won't have to be nearly as high as now.)

T2 stuff is level 76, which will still be a decent-enough upgrade from Blue level 70 equip, but without holding 'casual' players and newer guilds heads under the water forcuing them to run BWL if they want to run Naxx.  Just hit 70, get some blues and give it a shot.  Yeah, they'll lack the coordination of a more experienced group of players, but it'll be more like running MC the first time as a raid guild, rather than being a group of 60s in greens, popping into Naxx and expecting to pwn.

[Telemediocrity]

Exactly. I understand the desire to be protected from the randomness of potential catasses and to have boutique experiences balanced for one's own lifestyle. But as discussed, there's not a huge marketshare for that right now when you look at MMORPGs in general.

I call bullshit. There's a huge marketshare for non-timesinky games, they just won't look or play like the hacky-slash shit we've been used to playing as MMOG's. But MMOG devs have to think outside the level grind, fantasy genre, retreaded single-player RPG's with chat mindset that makes up 99% of all MMOG's right now.

I basically agree with you on this as a goal, but the first steps in this direction don't seem to be selling as well as I'd like.  Much as I really love DDO (It has some elements of the MMO cookie-cutter, but it's moving closer to what Haemish wants at least), the playerbase numbers haven't been huge.

[Phred]

I really doubt that. Maybe by the 4th expansion but not the next one.

Most of the fights require much more coordination and paying attention than any previous dungeon, with a few exceptions, to be very open to casual players. MC is liable to be quite easy for post-expansion casuals to do pickup raids in but beyond that I don't see them happening. The first two fights in BWL will also keep out the casuals as well.

I disagree. Insofar as I have seen, you have straight DPS bosses like patchwerk and bosses that only require good timing from a very small part of the raid (main tank, MC priests). Consider the way a tier2 equipped raid can steamroll through MC, then remember a year ago where you wiped on your first destroyer. That difference is just gear, experience, and blizzard easymode patches. No additional levels were added. You'll be able to power through the bosses in naxx just like you do in MC, especially after blizzard patches the content to make it more accessable to the casual player. No stats have been released but I fully expect level 70 blues to be better than the tier 1 epics. So imagine everyone is full tier 1, plus the extra talent points and HP for buffers. I think it's entirely possible.

The Anub'Rekhan fight doesn't fit this at all. A couple of people fucking up and dying can easily wipe your raid.

[HaemishM]

Exactly. I understand the desire to be protected from the randomness of potential catasses and to have boutique experiences balanced for one's own lifestyle. But as discussed, there's not a huge marketshare for that right now when you look at MMORPGs in general.

I call bullshit. There's a huge marketshare for non-timesinky games, they just won't look or play like the hacky-slash shit we've been used to playing as MMOG's. But MMOG devs have to think outside the level grind, fantasy genre, retreaded single-player RPG's with chat mindset that makes up 99% of all MMOG's right now.

I basically agree with you on this as a goal, but the first steps in this direction don't seem to be selling as well as I'd like.  Much as I really love DDO (It has some elements of the MMO cookie-cutter, but it's moving closer to what Haemish wants at least), the playerbase numbers haven't been huge.

Sure, but execution matters a whole shitload. DDO's execution at release just wasn't what it needed to be to really light the world on fire. It may be better now, but it's time has passed: it simply wasn't executed well enough when it was released. The concept of DDO is fantastic, but it's just not that fun a game, IMO. It certainly didn't have the tightness that the casual player is going to expect out of a game that's charging $15 a month. The casual player just won't pay that much for a game that plays like a mediocre barely above retarded cousin of MMOG's.

[shiznitz]

The game should be as tight as a good single player game since that is the flavor 100% instancing should be going after. It isn't. The graphics should be astounding since the number of models on screen can be carefully controlled. They aren't.

The game just looks and plays half-assed.

[Venkman]

Even though WoW requires much, much less time than EQ it requires much, much greater attention to the game than EQ did

That was really part of their genious (or, at least, skill). Make the game more engaging for shorter periods of time. More console, less traditional (ie: EQ) MMO. It's what gamers want. Grinding is not gaming.

Given the way items work, by the time folks ARE 66, wearing and wearing appropriate-level greens they'll have the equiv of a Tier 1 set.

Yep. Blizzard has even come out and said this directly. This is the primary reason I'm not playing right now. While I don't like Raiding academically, I can deal if there's a chance to continue growing my character, once or twice a week. But once I heard: a) the level cap was going to 70; and, b) yes, level 65 green gear will be better than purple MC drops, I realized there just wasn't a point. I'd rather do normal outdoorsie-type quests to continue through 70 and then maybe Raid again than have to Raid for what would have been a whole 18 months to get stuff that's going to be outclassed. The 1.11 redesign of the Mage talents was going to initially bring me back, but they didn't change really all that much. And no other class really had much appeal because I'd have hit 60 in any of them before the expansion anyway.

I basically agree with you on this as a goal, but the first steps in this direction don't seem to be selling as well as I'd like.

Neopets has 25mil accounts :)

Seriously though, there's a lot of games that are doing quite well and are not the same. The trouble is, they also don't get much press. It's like MMORPGs before WoW. Occasionally some media outlet would drag out Ms. Woolley, but otherwise the genre was largely ignored. Now everybody wants a piece of this "brand new way of playing games".

[Telemediocrity]

Neopets has 25mil accounts :)

Seriously though, there's a lot of games that are doing quite well and are not the same. The trouble is, they also don't get much press. It's like MMORPGs before WoW. Occasionally some media outlet would drag out Ms. Woolley, but otherwise the genre was largely ignored. Now everybody wants a piece of this "brand new way of playing games".

True, but do Neopets users pay money for the privilege?  The closest I can think of is an 18 year old girl who gave out topless pics on the internet in exchange for Neopets dollars, and I think that stretches the definition of "micropayments" a bit. ;p

I wonder if RuneScape qualifies as being more "casual-oriented"; from what I remember of playing it, it was actually very grindy, but the low system requirements and word of mouth made it the drug of choice for the currently-ages-8-to-13 set.

[lamaros]

Anyone who thinks that WoW wouldn't have been sucessful if it was a little more innovative and had less grind and raid bs throw in is stupid.

WoW is a shiny game and a popular one, but if you think it's selling itself on the annoying features like high end raids (that many people probably havn't even touched) and terrible PvP then you're delusional. You could change many aspects of WoW and still have as good a response.

If someone has the class (that Blizzard has demonstrated) along with the insight and Balls to try to deviate from the well trodden path it will be just as sucessful.

As Haemish has said getting things right is HARD, most cannot muster that kind of quality execution. Because it's so rare those that can don't have any reason to step off well trodden roads for their moneyhats.

So it wont happen quickly unlessl some smaller company does it, and does it well enough to get a better than expected return. Then the big companies can copy their model and just give it a few tweaks. Otherwise the Blizzards will just keep plugging away, one minor innovation after another. Because that's how it works.

[HaemishM]

True, but do Neopets users pay money for the privilege?  The closest I can think of is an 18 year old girl who gave out topless pics on the internet in exchange for Neopets dollars, and I think that stretches the definition of "micropayments" a bit. ;p

Depends on how large the undercover rewards are.

[Venkman]

True, but do Neopets users pay money for the privilege?

No. Unless you black market for Neopoints, everything's gained the old fashioned way: grind (quests/events) and commerce (have a shop/mall that sells goods you've grinded for). The game is effectively a page-view MMO without the raiding.

And yea, Runescape was fairly grindy. But like Club Penguin (and Habbo and Animal Crossing and so on) you can play in a browser for free (for awhile anyway). That effectively lowers the barrier to nil. Which makes sense considering these were not 8-figure development budgets.

[Hoax]

My little brother (12yrs old) plays Runescape a great deal.  He was like L6X last I checked.  Although my mom is upgrading her comp so he can play WoW on it (I bought it for him awhile ago).

[Venkman]

My little brother (12yrs old) plays Runescape a great deal.  He was like L6X last I checked.  Although my mom is upgrading her comp so he can play WoW on it (I bought it for him awhile ago).

Err, and? :)

Seriously, Runescape is pretty big, particularly for the tween/teen/library goers.