(MMO) Challenges of MMO Challengers
I made a comment last night about having high hopes for both Guild Wars 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic. I edited off a doubtful qualifier because... well, anyone who knows me will already know I'm skeptical at this stage. ;)
But really, any MMO that wants a notable slice of the pie is facing a huge uphill battle. WoW is undeniably the big target everyone points to as "success" in the industry, though there are certainly a number of games that manage a lesser degree and remain in the realm of happily profitable. Every new game wants to be a "WoW-killer," but that's almost impossible for a number of reasons.
From the standpoint of design, any new game walks a fine line. Copy things too closely and your game is derided as a clone. Stray too far and you lose people who are familiar with the current standards in how to do things. Just hope you please more people than you annoy.
From a content standpoint, WoW has a ridiculous lead. If a stand-alone game comes out a few years after another in the genre, you can reasonably expect it to be bigger and deeper. But WoW (and probably most MMORPGs) is constantly evolving. Each new content patch is another set of quests, dungeons, raids, equipment, abilities, mobs, models, or zones - and usually some combination of that list. Each expansion probably includes more of all of that. So any new game out of the gate is going to be compared to the accumulated content of years of growing in existing games. That's really rough. It's not even fair, per se, but any player deciding where to spend his/her time will have to face the question of which option has more to do for the money. This is a big point why I never got into Champions Online. I played a trial and... pretty much ran out of new and interesting things, with combat and quests feeling repetitive in just a few days.
And given that comparison, "free to play" games tend to have an edge over subscription-based games. After all, it's a lot easier to overlook less to do when it means paying $0 per month instead of $15. It also makes it more likely a player will pick up a game and play it in addition to something like WoW. The down side is that it means less income - sort of. DDO (and probably others, but this is the one that sticks out for me) proved that you can go F2P and actually expand your player base enough to make more money, in the end, from "microtransaction" store purchases than from monthly fees. It's tricky, but it's doable. Even so, that can make a game perfectly sustainable, but it won't dethrone WoW, or push revenue to that level.
From what I've heard of GW2, it's still expected to be F2P. Based on that, I have no reservation about saying I'm pretty sure I'll play it. My expectation goes something like this:
The "personal story" will be much like a campaign of plotline quests from the first game, albeit with more emphasis on where the player fits in and his/her specific actions. After X hours of play, it will be done until there's an expansion. Due to the branching, customized nature of it and the technical difficulties therein, it will probably either feel a little short in the end and/or the personal choices that are supposed to matter so much won't actually make as big a difference as they make it sound now.
The world events that are also supposed to shift depending on player actions/success will be neat for a little while, then come across as either ridiculously repetitive (how many times can the centaurs take that town to have it taken back and rebuilt, really?) or annoyingly random (I missed that again?). I simply don't see how you can set these up to feel available to players whenever they're playing without overusing them.
So overall, I expect an experience similar to the first game - a reasonably good game that peaks with the personal story and then have very little of interest to me, leading me to just play Sunday nights to group with friends or something.
Which brings me back around to another aspect of the whole thing - psychology. Lasting appeal to a game like an MMORPG is achieved primarily by keeping something for players to strive for. Leveling characters, building gear, taking down bosses - the feeling of growth and having a "next step" to work toward is what keeps people involved. In a F2P game, it matters less (though you do still see a drop-off in revenue if you don't introduce new things), but in a subscription-based game, you absolutely need to keep your player base interested and that's done with a new tier of raids, or a new quest hub, or a new expansion. GW fails this in my book, because I find there's virtually nothing I really want in the game after completing the storyline quests and my interest in the game has correspondingly waned.
And... with each new rung on the ladder, players have put more time, energy, and probably money to get there. That leads to an emotional investment, too. In order to actually replace WoW for my subscription money and play time, a new game not only has to be good enough to draw me in and have enough content to keep me occupied past a month or two. It also has to be able to overcome the attachment I have to characters I've built up over the last few years. My paladin is not just her current gear set and skills. She's also a representation of a whole slew of experiences, more good than bad, that I've had in playing WoW. That psychological/emotional investment in a game is a big thing to have to overcome, and it's a lot more intangible than resolution of textures, number of quests, or even challenge of enemies.
So what about SW:TOR? From what I've read thusfar, it seems Bioware is expecting to go with a monthly subscription. That means I'll probably be expecting greater things in return. So how do I think that will go?
With talk of class-specific quests and reference to WoW as a touchstone, I suspect there will be some personal storyline interwoven into the quest-heavy leveling process. Voice acting for everything is nice, but the novelty will wear off. Content probably won't match WoW (I don't see how it could), but will be respectable and fulfilling for a fair while, with enough to keep me occupied for 2-3 months.
The plot-heavy aspects of the instanced missions filling the role of "dungeons" will make them more interesting at first, but will bug me a bit as time goes on. Somehow killing a boss five times will prove more "believable" to me than freeing the same hostages from the same Imperials five times.
After a few months of solid personal interest, my commitment to the game will wane. Whether I keep playing will depend entirely on buy-in among people I know. Since I'm not likely to go making new friends in the game, staying there or drifting back to WoW will be based on what my existing friends/guildmates do. My guess is the limits of content will have people filtering back to WoW with more of their attention as the new shininess wears off, and thus I'll go that way too.
But really, any MMO that wants a notable slice of the pie is facing a huge uphill battle. WoW is undeniably the big target everyone points to as "success" in the industry, though there are certainly a number of games that manage a lesser degree and remain in the realm of happily profitable. Every new game wants to be a "WoW-killer," but that's almost impossible for a number of reasons.
From the standpoint of design, any new game walks a fine line. Copy things too closely and your game is derided as a clone. Stray too far and you lose people who are familiar with the current standards in how to do things. Just hope you please more people than you annoy.
From a content standpoint, WoW has a ridiculous lead. If a stand-alone game comes out a few years after another in the genre, you can reasonably expect it to be bigger and deeper. But WoW (and probably most MMORPGs) is constantly evolving. Each new content patch is another set of quests, dungeons, raids, equipment, abilities, mobs, models, or zones - and usually some combination of that list. Each expansion probably includes more of all of that. So any new game out of the gate is going to be compared to the accumulated content of years of growing in existing games. That's really rough. It's not even fair, per se, but any player deciding where to spend his/her time will have to face the question of which option has more to do for the money. This is a big point why I never got into Champions Online. I played a trial and... pretty much ran out of new and interesting things, with combat and quests feeling repetitive in just a few days.
And given that comparison, "free to play" games tend to have an edge over subscription-based games. After all, it's a lot easier to overlook less to do when it means paying $0 per month instead of $15. It also makes it more likely a player will pick up a game and play it in addition to something like WoW. The down side is that it means less income - sort of. DDO (and probably others, but this is the one that sticks out for me) proved that you can go F2P and actually expand your player base enough to make more money, in the end, from "microtransaction" store purchases than from monthly fees. It's tricky, but it's doable. Even so, that can make a game perfectly sustainable, but it won't dethrone WoW, or push revenue to that level.
From what I've heard of GW2, it's still expected to be F2P. Based on that, I have no reservation about saying I'm pretty sure I'll play it. My expectation goes something like this:
The "personal story" will be much like a campaign of plotline quests from the first game, albeit with more emphasis on where the player fits in and his/her specific actions. After X hours of play, it will be done until there's an expansion. Due to the branching, customized nature of it and the technical difficulties therein, it will probably either feel a little short in the end and/or the personal choices that are supposed to matter so much won't actually make as big a difference as they make it sound now.
The world events that are also supposed to shift depending on player actions/success will be neat for a little while, then come across as either ridiculously repetitive (how many times can the centaurs take that town to have it taken back and rebuilt, really?) or annoyingly random (I missed that again?). I simply don't see how you can set these up to feel available to players whenever they're playing without overusing them.
So overall, I expect an experience similar to the first game - a reasonably good game that peaks with the personal story and then have very little of interest to me, leading me to just play Sunday nights to group with friends or something.
Which brings me back around to another aspect of the whole thing - psychology. Lasting appeal to a game like an MMORPG is achieved primarily by keeping something for players to strive for. Leveling characters, building gear, taking down bosses - the feeling of growth and having a "next step" to work toward is what keeps people involved. In a F2P game, it matters less (though you do still see a drop-off in revenue if you don't introduce new things), but in a subscription-based game, you absolutely need to keep your player base interested and that's done with a new tier of raids, or a new quest hub, or a new expansion. GW fails this in my book, because I find there's virtually nothing I really want in the game after completing the storyline quests and my interest in the game has correspondingly waned.
And... with each new rung on the ladder, players have put more time, energy, and probably money to get there. That leads to an emotional investment, too. In order to actually replace WoW for my subscription money and play time, a new game not only has to be good enough to draw me in and have enough content to keep me occupied past a month or two. It also has to be able to overcome the attachment I have to characters I've built up over the last few years. My paladin is not just her current gear set and skills. She's also a representation of a whole slew of experiences, more good than bad, that I've had in playing WoW. That psychological/emotional investment in a game is a big thing to have to overcome, and it's a lot more intangible than resolution of textures, number of quests, or even challenge of enemies.
So what about SW:TOR? From what I've read thusfar, it seems Bioware is expecting to go with a monthly subscription. That means I'll probably be expecting greater things in return. So how do I think that will go?
With talk of class-specific quests and reference to WoW as a touchstone, I suspect there will be some personal storyline interwoven into the quest-heavy leveling process. Voice acting for everything is nice, but the novelty will wear off. Content probably won't match WoW (I don't see how it could), but will be respectable and fulfilling for a fair while, with enough to keep me occupied for 2-3 months.
The plot-heavy aspects of the instanced missions filling the role of "dungeons" will make them more interesting at first, but will bug me a bit as time goes on. Somehow killing a boss five times will prove more "believable" to me than freeing the same hostages from the same Imperials five times.
After a few months of solid personal interest, my commitment to the game will wane. Whether I keep playing will depend entirely on buy-in among people I know. Since I'm not likely to go making new friends in the game, staying there or drifting back to WoW will be based on what my existing friends/guildmates do. My guess is the limits of content will have people filtering back to WoW with more of their attention as the new shininess wears off, and thus I'll go that way too.
For me, the content in Guild Wars is something I'm interested in, but I don't have the concentration / focus / interest in striving to attain these. For example, reputation in Guild Wars is something with obvious benefits, and I want the title, but I don't want to have to go out and clear a whole bunch of content repeatedly to get the title and the benefits. I want to vanquish all of Tyria, but that's a long, arduous process, which I don't look forward to. Basically, it isn't even 'time vs reward', it's more 'time vs interest'. And the time is too long to keep my interest. In GW2, they're going to have similar, which is good for those people who really want to strive for them, but bad for people like me who can't keep focus long enough. However, there are some things I'm interested in -- the dungeon crawls. These will have armour sets you can collect, which I think is ... what, 9 or 10 pieces? This means doing the dungeon ten times, but thankfully due to the nature of these dungeons, I don't think they'll feel that repetitive. We'll have to see. The thing is, 'nine or ten times', with an actual tangible reward each time, is better than doing 40+ runs of two or three hours each for one reward at the end.
ReplyDeleteI file things like GW's reputation and vanquishes under "achievement stuff" more than "content." That is, perhaps, a personal distinction, though. To me, content is not just something to do, but something new to do. For example, the War in Kryta quest line. It reused existing areas and such (which caused it to lose points in my book), but the quests were new and it introduced story progress. Achievements are extra things to do that you'll usually work toward in the process of just playing the game, but often require repeated grinds of various sorts far beyond normal gameplay. There's nothing new or fresh about it, but sometimes there are attached rewards that have value worth weighing. GW reputations and titles are something I've almost never cared about. The title bonuses are very niche and rarely feel like they make a difference to me. The few I did want to get up were for unlocking a couple skills of value. Vanquishing really doesn't matter to me, it's just something to do while playing Sundays. Reputations in WoW vary from simple to agonizing, but most factions are appealing because they provide access to scattered items of the same level as entry-tier raiding. If you don't put in a lot of time with groups, it's absolutely a good way to get a jump on gearing. And if you do raid frequently, it helps get ready for it even if you can probably get the gear from drops. Many other WoW achievements are fluff with no impact on gameplay and I don't bother with those unless it's something I feel like doing. Achievements are time sinks. In a lot of ways, I view them as easy filler dropped in the game in absence of real content. Some of them have rewards that make the investment of time more tolerable, but as the ratio of time required to usefulness of reward goes up, the number of people with interest to pursue them goes down. - I'm curious to see exactly how GW2 is working dungeons. In GW, they're really not much more than just more zones with the complexity of keys. In WoW, they're instanced zones with specific boss encounters that each drop specific (if randomized) gear.
ReplyDelete... doing 40+ runs of two or three hours each for one reward at the end. Ugh. I'd hate to see any game that used this design or thinking.
ReplyDeleteHmm... I could do that in WoW! ;) It would be almost a worst-case scenerio: 40 daily runs of a long heroic dungeon (Deadmines?) with a ill-prepared group could take 2+ hours each time and net 2800 valor points - enough for a tier 11 breastplate or legs with 600 left over, which isn't really enough for anything by itself. Though, honestly, I think it would be hard for any group to do so that much, and still take that long at it. And that totally disregards the heroic-level drops (and justice point gear) that would probably be upgrades for any such group accumulating along the way with every run. Plus running 5-mans for valor points is more of a "poor man's" alternative way to get that gear anyway rather than the intended way.
ReplyDeleteThe reward is a title, in Guild Wars, for example. Some titles improve a few skills that you can get specifically.
ReplyDeleteYeah, those are way worse. Reward to effort ratio in the ridiculous area. ;) As I've found myself trying to explain to you and Samantha before, I really don't care enough about titles (even the ones that have some minor impact on a skill or zone/enemy-specific buff, but especially things like "lucky") or different-looking-but-same-effectiveness armor or a few more points in my Hall toward GW2 stuff (that I don't expect to be better, numbers-wise, than what I pick up in that game) to put much in the way of resources or time toward such things. And that's... really about all that seems to be left to do in the game at this point.
ReplyDelete