I’m sure that any of you visiting based on the title of this article will think I’m about to point out the poor design decisions behind having too many factions in an MMO. You might also suspect that I could be talking about how much of a grind factions are in LotRO and other games. I am going to do neither, however! I’m actually referring to player factions or “styles.”
Dresden and I correspond frequently on our forums and he pointed out how compartmentalized our community seems to be. The general appearance to outsiders might be that we are a deeply divisive group of players who shield ourselves with many labels and do our best to ensure that our faction gets the most resources. I will not argue that we don’t do this to some degree. I am guilty of labeling myself, especially when we have so many to choose from: Soloer, grouper, raider, PvPer, PvEer, casual, microcore, and hardcore to name a few. The most important thing to remember, however, is that as much as we might try to pretend otherwise, few players are only on one side of the balance.
It is that very balance that leads me to wonder if developers break us up into demographics when they plan their budgets. Is there a check list that says solo, group, raid, PvP and so forth to check off or do they recognize that we can be some of each of those? Given the fact that we can be quite rabid in the support of our play style on blogs and message boards I do have to wonder.
I don’t actually believe that players are as extreme as they let on. I advocate group content at all times but I like to have the option to solo. If all the solo content were to up and disappear I would not be happy. Now, if PvP MMOs disappeared I wouldn’t cry but I do rather enjoy opt-in PvP like battlegrounds and scenarios. The point I’m trying to make is that we have tendencies and not factions. MMO design needs to cater more to that notion and less to the absolutes. Doing so, however, runs the risk of creating a “little for everyone” and ensuring that nobody is happy. Selecting a few tendencies early on and sticking to them religiously would go a long way.
To do this would not be unlike how a guild is formed. I learned a long time ago as a guild leader that it is important to know what your goal is and stick to it. Guilds that have unclear identities get stuck pretty quickly. This is why the Sodality website is so clear about our goals, missions and tendencies. It saves us the trouble of say, a hardcore 60 hour a week raider joining, getting frustrated with our laid back pace, and leaving in a huff. That might sound like a bad idea to turn someone off before they ever apply since guilds, like MMOs, are always looking for new players. In the long run you’re better served with honesty, however. You have less drama and one less angry player who wants to damage your reputation. MMO designers could learn a lot from that.
Is it worth attracting customers in the short term for a small amount of money when they will likely leave your product and possibly negatively affect others who might have tried it otherwise? How much does a bad reputation and a lot of players with opposite tendencies cost? My guess is a lot. I hope that lesson has been learned in the industry and that going forwards MMOs have fewer but very transparent tendencies. We might not be extremes but we certainly have styles of play that we prefer. The sooner that is learned the sooner we can have average sized MMOs that grow large and fewer massive start titles that collapse into server consolidations in less than a year. I may just be dreaming though!
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The market runs on short term thinking. Since these MMO things need big money to even get off the ground, it’s almost certain they have some sort of investor backing, and they almost never want to look at the long term. Especially today, when the market as a whole is extraordinarily high on KoolAid fumes and day trading.
I wish I could say you were wrong Tesh, but I can’t. You’re absolutely correct. I do think this short sightedness when it comes to money is a plague in the MMO industry and other areas of America. Nobody seems to look past two years or so. I’m not even sure why.
It is almost as if MMOs are publicly traded now. Copernicus could interest me just because it is run by a private company! Of course all the other exciting things help!
The problem is that MMOs need to amass lots of subscribers and their respective revenues as fast as possible or they end up falling out over favor very quickly with their parent company as per the MMOs that ended up with server consolidations as you mentioned. The temptation then is to cater to the lowest common denominator — the casual gamer.
I do favor long-term thinking over short-term thinking but that takes a unique business model. Look at Blizzard which is their own publisher. They can afford to take their time and think long-term. Every day they reap the rewards of the investment they made in their MMO while other companies that tried to rush out their MMOs unpolished and untested are struggling if not bankrupt.
If a MMO can cater to as many different types of playstyles all at the same time and let them scale up or scale down their participation (soloer ascends to grouper, raider reverts to casual, etc.) then that is the best situation to be in. But we all know it’s pretty hard to please everyone all of the time.
I’ve pretty much given up on the perfect MMO being created in our lifetime. Think about this: there are just a handful of people that have the power to dictate how a MMO should be made and you can count them on the fingers of one hand.
Imagine if only 5 musicians made all the music in the world? What if only 5 painters did all the painting in the world? What if 5 movie directors made all of the movies in the world? Needless, to say it would be outrageous.
Right now, it’s all just a matter of luck. We just have to hope and believe that Curt and 38 Studios can create a serious MMO that we can all be proud of.
I’m hoping that the development of MMOs can be democratized. Then I wouldn’t have to waste so much time blogging.
@Wolfshead
Very interesting point about the number of people who have the power to dictate MMO creation. I had never thought about it in those terms but you are spot on. It’s too bad there aren’t more 38 studios out there.
It would be interesting if the MMO/Gaming industry was more like the film industry. Producers and money men would invest in talent rather than directly controlling the product. Also, there seems to be a heavy amount of consolidation with companies like EA owning too much of the creative minds.
I also think there isn’t a very stable, consistent or predictable profit structure for MMOs. The expectations that Blizzard created cannot be applied to other MMOs for the reasons you have stated (other MMOs don’t allow for the long-range options, and only WoW2 will be a WoW-killer). Companies believe they can invest in a short development window and then chuck the QA team at launch, even when the product is a premie blue-baby.