Matrix Online vs. World of Warcraft? Interesting...

[Merusk]

So now we've gone from, "It's all Blizzard Fanbois!" to "It's just peer pressure. People want to belong!"

Fantatsic.

You all don't like Pop music either, but it sells. Over and over and over.  No love for MySpace, either, but I can find more people who know about it or have a page set-up than know who the House Minority Whip is.  Consider that.

[schild]

I can explain Blizzard types, Myspace whores, and people who like pop music.

[schild]

I was always talking about the world market when referring to WoW. Comeon, Warcraft and Asia? Diablo and Europe. Still, brand recognition.

Yes Warcraft (the RTSes) was big in China (go go pirates!) but again WoW may or may not be number one in a very large Chinese MMORPG market which was already huge before they entered and they definitely aren't number one in S. Korea the one place in the world you would expect them to be.

Honestly, I wouldn't expect WoW to be number one in S. Korea. It's too goddamned easy and doesn't take long enough. But top tier? Yes. I don't ever trust numbers that include Japan, S. Korea, and Thailand anyway. Too many cafes and shared accounts.

[Valmorian]

I can explain Blizzard types, Myspace whores, and people who like pop music.

Perhaps they just enjoy those things, as opposed to doing them because "everyone else" is?

[schild]

Honestly, for MySpace, I am unable to wrap my brain around it.

It's ugly.
It's hard to navigate.
It's spammy.
It's ugly.
It's hard to navigate.
It's spammy.

It's everything THE NEW WEB ORDER shouldn't be. Retention in all MMOGs has always been an "Everyone Else" is sort of thing. You come and go with friends. If you're new to a game, you make friends there and leave when they leave. I'm not saying it's a bad thing with MMOGs, I'm just saying. And when there's millions of people, it's even HARDER. As for Pop music, well, have you heard Gwen Stefani's new song? The state of pop music is fucking terrible. And I like catchy shit as much as the next guy.

[Xanthippe]

As for Pop music, well, have you heard Gwen Stefani's new song? The state of pop music is fucking terrible. And I like catchy shit as much as the next guy.

The state of pop music has always been terrible.  Out of the top 100 songs in a year, some small number < 6 probably - in a typical year - will be good, and the rest will be crap.  It's always been; it shall always be.

(Sure, there are some years when there are a lot of great songs, but then others when there's maybe 1 great song.)

[Nonentity]

The parts I love in MMOs - running around as a character, blowing shit up, getting better shinies, big worlds with shitloads of content, and running around with my friends.

But I can't stand 90% of the people. They need to make a game that you can host a server for with just your friends, and go around kicking ass in.

And no, Neverwinter Nights doesn't count. That game is not MMO-ish enough to fit that bill, and the content is too tile-based.

That's one plus point of smaller MMOs, is that you usually don't have to deal with as many people. Those people that stick around, however, are kind of lame.

I remember one time I took a break from WoW (this is about a year into retail - and I had been in beta a year prior), and I went and played EQ2 on some random server. I got into a random guild, and everyone on Teamspeak was like, right past that level of nerdiness that made me uncomfortable. Half the guild was laughing over these bearform jokes that I found mildly amusing the first time I saw them in WoW, a year and a half prior. Most of the general playerbase for EQ2 is WEIRD.

I've found that I can find a more relaxed, asshole-ish set of players far easier in WoW then I can in any MMO prior, I'll give it that.

[Endie]

But I can't stand 90% of the people. They need to make a game that you can host a server for with just your friends, and go around kicking ass in.

And no, Neverwinter Nights doesn't count. That game is not MMO-ish enough to fit that bill, and the content is too tile-based.

That's one plus point of smaller MMOs, is that you usually don't have to deal with as many people. Those people that stick around, however, are kind of lame.

So you want a game that's just for you and your friends, but which is massive, and if any of you stick around you're lame?

[Margalis]

Brand recognition might drive box sales but not retention.

Of course pop music sucks. That's the point. Most pop songs are exactly the same as other pop songs. They are easy to listen to, easy to digest. The musical equivalent of comfort food. I think a lot of people who like only pop music do so because that is all they hear. In a lot of countries people have much more diverse musical tastes, in the US the music you hear on radio or on TV is VERY limited and you can only find anything else by actively seeking it out.

[Nonentity]

But I can't stand 90% of the people. They need to make a game that you can host a server for with just your friends, and go around kicking ass in.

And no, Neverwinter Nights doesn't count. That game is not MMO-ish enough to fit that bill, and the content is too tile-based.

That's one plus point of smaller MMOs, is that you usually don't have to deal with as many people. Those people that stick around, however, are kind of lame.

So you want a game that's just for you and your friends, but which is massive, and if any of you stick around you're lame?

...

Crap, I kind of wrote myself into the corner on that one, didn't I?

I'll reiterate my previous statement.

Small MMO games often have strange subscriber bases. What I'm indicating is not an MMO at all, but an MMO in scale and content update. I'd even pay a monthly fee to be able to update my little world with the latest features and stuff.

[stray]

Would you still pay that monthly fee if it was basically the entire cost of server upkeep?

[tazelbain]

Guilds Wars with full instantiation?

[Nonentity]

Would you still pay that monthly fee if it was basically the entire cost of server upkeep?

More then likely.

I'm such a sucker for new content and new things to keep me entertained - my money goes where the entertainment is.

If this were able to keep me entertained like an MMO, but it was just me and my friends, but with similar landmass size, and able to affect the world on a global scope, then hell yes.

[Nonentity]

Guilds Wars with full instantiation?

Kinda... but not quite. I want to be able to host the entire thing on a home system. Or, if you don't have a system worthy of a dedicated server that can keep the world running when you're not there, do some sort of a worldsave system that can save the state and pick it back up when you fire it up with your friends.

I'm thinking only the people hosting servers need to pay the monthly fee in order to access the content - maybe the players pay a tiny amount for master server for their character, so if they ever want to move their character to another server, the master server can verify it's not a hacked character or whatnot.

But, I don't want it to be something where your character travels a lot to peer-to-peer games, like Diablo or whatnot. I want it to be a centralized persistent world you just play with a few friends.

I can't think of another way to do this.

[tazelbain]

> But, I don't want it to be something where your character travels a lot to peer-to-peer games, like Diablo or whatnot. I want it to be a centralized persistent world you just play with a few friends.

What do you care how it is done on the back end?  Ok, so you separate the world state from the character state.  You give the world state a name and password.  Now, you and your friends can join the world, change it as you play.  Sure there could be hundreds of players on your server but you don't even know they exist.  And since world state is separate, you and your friends could play on your own schedules, but if you do play together, you'd be in the world state.

[Merusk]

Some days I wonder how many berets and black turtlenecks you folks own.  Really.

[stray]

One of each actually.

[Nonentity]

> But, I don't want it to be something where your character travels a lot to peer-to-peer games, like Diablo or whatnot. I want it to be a centralized persistent world you just play with a few friends.

What do you care how it is done on the back end?  Ok, so you separate the world state from the character state.  You give the world state a name and password.  Now, you and your friends can join the world, change it as you play.  Sure there could be hundreds of players on your server but you don't even know they exist.  And since world state is separate, you and your friends could play on your own schedules, but if you do play together, you'd be in the world state.

Hm. Good point. Just have a server farm running scalable instanced worlds for you and your friends, if you want to pay the money to have your own world. Maybe tack it on as a premium service. It really starts to overcomplicate it at that point though, really.

The hardest part, really, is finding the cap for the world. I'd like to say, maybe, 40? 50 people? You and your guild (if you're into that - I always find there are people in any guild I hate), or you and your 5 real-life pals.

The world has to scale to be a challenge just for you guys. There's a lot that just really wouldn't work in an MMO setting, which is why it has to be kind of a local thing.

[Venkman]

Hopefully NWN2 quilt worlds can do this. But it rarely makes a big splash because, by and larger, player-created (not directed, actually created) content sucks for the masses.

Go, Chess, Checkers, etc., offer open ended, often unpredictable, and much more organic gameplay than a diku does. Once you crack the diku 'puzzle' (what little there is), you'll know it from the inside out for eternity. It's not even in the same boat as the others. Hell, it's not even in the same ocean.

Diku rules vary based on the other players present, just as they do in Go, Chess, etc. The game mechanic doesn't change, but isn't a turd just because its old. That's all I'm saying.

Brand recognition and marketing. WoW just isn't THAT good a game and it's certainly nothing new

I thought we had been all over this. Brand, yes. Bottomless-well development budget, yes. Hands-off publisher, yes. Years to test, yes. Brand based on a game IP from a company with as recognizable a brand in their own name, yes. Ability to properly manage the world stage concurrently, yes.

Nobody, truly, nobody, else has this convergence of ideal factors. WoW isn't "good game" numbers. Most games don't break a mil, much less many multiples of them. And it's not a game. It's a category, a line of intersecting businesses managed as a business unit unto itself. It has to be to continue running that way, just based on personnel requirements alone.

It's ugly.
It's hard to navigate.
It's spammy.
It's ugly.
It's hard to navigate.
It's spammy.

It's theirs'. They own it, as a generation. Don't expect it to survive further corporatization though. Todays tweens and teens can smell sanitized management-approved content at a thousand paces, and villify it more publicly and faster than any amount of media can counter. They're too connected, and businesses (and pundits) are still trying to catch up.

[stray]

Diku rules vary based on the other players present, just as they do in Go, Chess, etc. The game mechanic doesn't change, but isn't a turd just because its old. That's all I'm saying.

My point is that diku ages, while the others do not.

So yeah, basically, it's a turd because it's old. It might have been OK at one point in time, but not after a zillion iterations of it (unlike chess or go).

The worst kind of game is the one that doesn't surprise or challenge you anymore. The one where you know exactly how, when, and what do to be successful.

[edit]

Buff > Pull > Tank > DPS > Heal > Ding

It's more of a routine than a game. I might as well be licking envelopes.

[Teleku]

Err, so, all of you hate every single RPG and Strategy Game (RTS or Turn Based) that has come out any later than about two decades ago?  Cause all of those have basically been reiterating the EXACT same thing since the 80`s.....

[Trippy]

I was always talking about the world market when referring to WoW. Comeon, Warcraft and Asia? Diablo and Europe. Still, brand recognition.

Yes Warcraft (the RTSes) was big in China (go go pirates!) but again WoW may or may not be number one in a very large Chinese MMORPG market which was already huge before they entered and they definitely aren't number one in S. Korea the one place in the world you would expect them to be.

Honestly, I wouldn't expect WoW to be number one in S. Korea. It's too goddamned easy and doesn't take long enough. But top tier? Yes. I don't ever trust numbers that include Japan, S. Korea, and Thailand anyway. Too many cafes and shared accounts.

You can't have it both ways.

[Merusk]

Damnit, Teleku beat me to it.

[schild]

Err, so, all of you hate every single RPG and Strategy Game (RTS or Turn Based) that has come out any later than about two decades ago? Cause all of those have basically been reiterating the EXACT same thing since the 80`s.....

RTS titles have evolved a good deal. Now, the classic JRPG? Didn't I already comment on this? You play it for the story, the character, etc. Really everything except for the gameplay. Now, there are hybrid JRPGs like Shadow Hearts and Atelier Iris which are fantastic for their own reasons - many of which include gameplay. The JRPG is in a decent place, there are enough different types among the genre that it's still alive and well. Now, american RPG? Lollercoaster. Are we talking Bioware style? Baldur's Gate and such? Yea, I'm pretty much done with those. Downhill since Torment, as I've said a thousand times. I couldn't even do KoToR. Now, the action RPG - Fable, etc... There's a reason the word action is there. I simply can't clump those into the RPG genre without a tiny bit of anger. They're more "fun" than a baseline RPG.

You can't have it both ways.

Actually, with Asia, I might be able to. There's seriously no way to gauge the actual number. It's a problem. And all those other companies reporting, I simply don't trust them. Also, Warcraft being big in China due to pirates doesn't take away from the game being hugely popular. And as for South Korea, no, as I said, I would expect them to be #1 if the game were Starcraft 2, but not quite with WoW. It doesn't fit the South Korean player profile. But you can be goddamned sure between the cafes and the people that it's left a permanent mark. Remember, they don't have consoles. Different world.

Brand recognition might drive box sales but not retention.

No one ever expects Blizzard to make anything less than an AAA level polished experience. But even they have to get the box into someones hand before they hook them.

[Zane0]

The ability to log on and enjoy an hour or three of polished entertainment with friends is really the main criteria for retention, I think.  The silly amount of haranguing over world vs. game, diku vs. skill systems, obselete paradigm blah blah etc., are probably differences that aren't very important at all for 90% of your potential subscribers.

[Nebu]

I thought we had been all over this. Brand, yes. Bottomless-well development budget, yes. Hands-off publisher, yes. Years to test, yes. Brand based on a game IP from a company with as recognizable a brand in their own name, yes. Ability to properly manage the world stage concurrently, yes.

We have and I agree with everything you state.  My point was that WoW has the numbers that it has for reasons other than it's the bestest MMOG EVAR.  You seem to agree.

[UnSub]

The worst kind of game is the one that doesn't surprise or challenge you anymore. The one where you know exactly how, when, and what do to be successful.

Buff > Pull > Tank > DPS > Heal > Ding

And yet if you don't have these things, the established market for such games meet it with a collective, "Wuh?" and go back to grinding for loot.

I'm keeping an eye on Fury because, in the very least, it looks like I'll be able to body slam opponents into the ground. However, it's not generating a lot of heat because it's not a MMORPG that everyone is familiar with before they even install it.

[Slyfeind]

Yeah, people try to break out of the mold once in a while. Those games typically "don't count." Meanwhile, I go to MySpace because when I check my e-mail there, I can see my friends' faces. I remember in the 80's, I listened to pop music because it was easy to listen to. I eat fast food because it's addictive. All this mainstream crap is just too convenient. If we want to break the mold and find the diamonds in the rough, we have to go through a lot of roughage.

I'm too lazy to do that, and so are the vast majority of consumers.

I'm smart enough to know if something's going to hurt me; but when it comes to entertainment, I'll go with the masses sure enough.

[stray]

The worst kind of game is the one that doesn't surprise or challenge you anymore. The one where you know exactly how, when, and what do to be successful.

Buff > Pull > Tank > DPS > Heal > Ding

And yet if you don't have these things, the established market for such games meet it with a collective, "Wuh?" and go back to grinding for loot.

I'm keeping an eye on Fury because, in the very least, it looks like I'll be able to body slam opponents into the ground. However, it's not generating a lot of heat because it's not a MMORPG that everyone is familiar with before they even install it.

2 years ago....Maybe even a year...I would have been totally stoked about Fury. Now it's "I'll wait and see..."

Same with Conan, same with Gods and Heroes to an extent. Those two aren't shifting gears quite as extensively as Fury is, but it seems like they're trying to develop a better combat experience as well.

[stray]

If we want to break the mold and find the diamonds in the rough, we have to go through a lot of roughage.

It isn't that hard to find alternative/fun ideas in games outside the mmo genre. Not everything is so dreadful.

Why mmo's don't follow the same pattern though, I don't know.

[tkinnun0]

In addition to what schild said about YouTube and MySpace performing a unique service where yet-another-EQ-clone can only cater to niches, I'd like to add that I'm under the opinion that gamers are considerably more finicky about what they play than web browsers are about the pages they visit.

YouTube is not the only site for people to share their videos, but they had a good enough service that allowed them to expand the market. They took a niche and made it to mainstream, if you will. Perhaps the advice to budding MMORPG developers should be: take a niche and make it so good you can expect WoW numbers.

About web surfers not being finicky: [Akamai] found 75% of the 1,058 people asked would not return to websites that took longer than four seconds to load. Compared to that, a 1-hour queue is an eternity.

[Merusk]

If we want to break the mold and find the diamonds in the rough, we have to go through a lot of roughage.

It isn't that hard to find alternative/fun ideas in games outside the mmo genre. Not everything is so dreadful.

Why mmo's don't follow the same pattern though, I don't know.

Computers do math.  It's far, far, far simpler to say "here's x hps and this mob does y damage while this heal does z every 5 seconds" than to figure out a new paradigm that may or may not get the users to offset the cost of developing this new, unproven idea. 

Also, all games except FPS boil down to the mechanics you gave, and even those use that mechanic to some extent.

[Margalis]

About web surfers not being finicky: [Akamai] found 75% of the 1,058 people asked would not return to websites that took longer than four seconds to load. Compared to that, a 1-hour queue is an eternity.

Of course, Akamai has a vested interest in the poll results as they are a web accelerator. Even if the poll is legit, just because 75% of people *say* they wouldn't return doesn't mean they actually won't. People say and do different things.

I bet before WOW came out if you asked how many MMO players would wait in a queue for an hour 80% of current WOW players would say they woudn't accept that.

[stray]

If we want to break the mold and find the diamonds in the rough, we have to go through a lot of roughage.

It isn't that hard to find alternative/fun ideas in games outside the mmo genre. Not everything is so dreadful.

Why mmo's don't follow the same pattern though, I don't know.

Computers do math.

Wha? All computer games use math. And the vast majority of them still present different patterns and scenarios other than a diku does. That statement makes it seems like there's no other design choice than EQ or WoW.

It's far, far, far simpler to say "here's x hps and this mob does y damage while this heal does z every 5 seconds" than to figure out a new paradigm that may or may not get the users to offset the cost of developing this new, unproven idea.

First, I never said I was against HP specifically (it's more like I'm against diku's method of protecting HP). Secondly, you don't have to come up with "new, unproven ideas". There are dozens of alternative ideas that already exist. If that wasn't so, gaming would be dead.

[Venkman]

We have and I agree with everything you state.  My point was that WoW has the numbers that it has for reasons other than it's the bestest MMOG EVAR.  You seem to agree.

Yep.

However, the point I debate is the "bestest MMOG EVAR" part. There is no absolute hard and fast rule to assess "best". By my measure, WoW is the "best" because it's enjoyed by so many friggin' people. How can they all be wrong? Blizz makes lots of cash, can push out quality content, and has appealed to far more MMOG gamers in the West than almost every other MMOG title combined. People may want Sigil fights to return for a bitmapped-based isometric game, but it's just as obvious how narrow that appeal was. WoW didn't just get some rudiementary game mechanics right. They got an entire business model right. That's critical to this discussion because it applies to other MMOs that are mocked, even with the huge success they enjoy.

In short, it really doesn't matter who here thinks a game sucks or not when there's a few million or scores of millions playing them. Critics and the mass market only mix on occasion, and it's never the critics that matter that much as business evolves. We here can cry for the past or understand why the future chose not to evolve things like:

• Open-template skills-based games (because it confuses players brand new to something marketed as a game)
  
• All public-space content/bosses (because players don't like other players they don't know getting in the way)
• Crafting that matters (because a company can more easily control the collective playerbase tech level more readily through drops, and players have proven far more interested in quests and combat than anvils and hammers).
• Placing your house anywhere (because urban blight sucks and breaks immersion into a fantastical game more than anything)

This isn't because developers are uncreative boobs. It's because they're answering needs.

For example: Eve is certainly something worth emulating. It is not going to appeal to millions. If you've got the budget to make a game that can be sold to millions, what model would you emulate? Meanwhile, if you've got a game that'll only appeal to a few hundred thousand, then you have more options.

You can add creativity to iteration, but you need a more solid foundation from which to grow. WoW with housing, player vendors and a real crafting system would by nature do way better than SWG did, because the latter started with those without getting the most important elements right (combat and questing).

So to me it's not a question of whether a game is best or not. That tells us nothing. What we should discuss are things like:

• Launch requirements for maximum success (and not just "combat done right". How is it done right? What system?
  
• Evolution requirements. What new features. What new systems. Add crafting or fundamentally alter it?
• Trends from other genres. It could be argued that WoW got right a lot of things based on both how small the genre was to that point and what players expect from their vast experience in other gaming genres
  

E-peen waving WoW's suckage is a dead topic, because it doesn't suck, isn't a failure, and the millions that like it aren't sheep.