Contrary to popular belief I’m not missing in action! I’m just preparing for a two week trip to Germany. If anyone would be interested in doing a guest article on Epic Slant while I’m gone I would appreciate it very much! Today, however, I want to discuss a trend that may not be such a good thing for MMOs. I’m referring to the “three month MMO patch cycle” that Blizzard uses and has been picked up by other companies. In particular I’ve noticed lately that EQ2 is doing it. Each quarter a large content patch is released and players cheer! This is a good thing right?
On the outside the quarterly patches make a lot of sense and seem like a great value for players. If you’re bored with content you only have to wait a few months for something new. These large patches are also free so there is no arguing value there. Those are some really compelling reasons for players to be excited. They just leave me wondering what the down side is.
One of the issues I see is that the quarterly patch leads to “time released” expansions. Instead of a complete and deep expansion like we used to get back in the EverQuest days we get about 25 to 50% of one. The other portions will be released in the next two, three or four quarterly patches. Players pay up front but do not receive everything they paid for until all the patches are in. The question here is, “do modern expansions offer a good content to money ratio?” You can be the judge there.
The quarterly patch cycle also seems to create a mini hype and quit mentality. When a new patch is released everyone subscribes and brings the servers to their knees. Once they get bored they quit again. That might be okay from a development perspective but as a guild leader it is a huge pain in the neck. Your numbers constantly fluctuate and when you replace someone they’ll always show up shortly after. This is a real issue for the community.
Some studios will use the quarterly patch to defer fixes. Instead of addressing critical issues immediately they’ll simply say “we’ll catch it in the next major release.” I know that has happened in WoW once or twice and that attitude scares me a little. That most certainly isn’t a value to customers if the situation is bad enough. This rigid structure could do more harm than good in this case.
That leaves me to ask the question, “How do you feel about the three month release cycle?” Are you getting a benefit or is this really more of a help to developers?
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LOTRO has also caught the quarterly patch bug, while DDO is going with a more frequent patch-per-two-months cycle because their content pack model literally depends on having content available for players to buy.
I’ve long maintained that the largest potential market for WoW at this point in its life cycle consists of former WoW players. That isn’t to say that newbies aren’t going to drift in from time to time, but that’s relatively independent of anything specific about one patch or another. A major patch can both make the front page of all the major gaming sites AND contain a little bit of something for everyone once the former players have actually stopped to look at what’s included. The once a month patches with maybe a single big feature that Blizzard used to produce in 2005 aren’t going to accomplish either.