This weekend my play experience on EverQuest II really got me thinking. I had time to think because it took between four and ten real minutes to zone each time I wanted to do so. I also had some time to reflect on life each time the Vigilant: Rescue crashed on my group and I. It was a real frustrating night because something I love and am passionate about just wasn’t working like I knew it should! On Sunday we finally got the message that battlegrounds were being removed for maintenance until further notice and things started to get a little better. Then that got me thinking too!
When you’re in a situation that EverQuest II finds itself in when is enough enough? When do you look at a feature that is wreaking havoc on your players and pull the plug? It is an interesting concept to me. Obviously SOE has invested a lot of hours in developing these battlegrounds. They represent a significant cost for the company but they seem to be doing more harm to the core product than good. What is the threshold before it is time to just take one for the team and say, “no thank you sir, this won’t work for now?” At any rate I really do applaud and appreciate the EQ2 team for pulling these things out. It was really frustrating my guild mates and myself. Having the courage to do so really should be recognized. I realize most people would prefer to look at the negative but I think it takes a bigger team to pull a broken feature out than to just try to plow through and fix it.
Was this a good decision to make? I think so. I’d be interested to hear everyone else’s view on it though. Should you pull large features out of MMOs?
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I love EQ2 and always considered it the best themepark style MMORPG there is. However, if I could change anything about the game, it would be it’s stability and performance. EQ2 just feels buggy especially compared to something as slick as WoW which will run on anything. EQ2 ran badly when it came out 6 years ago and it still doesn’t run well on modern PCs. It’s a real shame.
Actually, I think it’s relatively easy to make the decision to shut down a single feature that is breaking the rest of the game. Middle hard is chronically delaying a feature, like Shader 3.0, that just isn’t ready. The really hard part is getting the priorities right in the first place.
P.S. Minor tangent, but here’s a hard choice for you:
I was backlogged on podcasts and just got to the latest episode of the Multiverse over the weekend. You mentioned your post about things a new game needs, where you advised “Let the middle be thin! You can fill that in later and it is transitory. Start strong, end strong.”
I’d forgotten about that little tidbit, in a week where you went on to talk about how games should be redesigned to keep most players in the middle content. Guess there’s no pleasing Uncle Ferrel?
Haha no not really. That is more of a “reality” vs “ideal” argument. In the ideal I’d like games to take a slower pace and have a lot in the middle. The problem is I don’t actually see developers switching back to that mold. That is why when I look at reality I just say “screw the middle” since we’re just suppose to plow through it anyway. Contrary sounding I know but it is more of a situational argument. A “well I can’t have it my way” sort of thing!