What Classifies A MMO As Successful?

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Arlee

A few months ago at a Media and Telecom Conference in New York Take-Two Interactive’s Chairman Strauss Zelnick commented on how they are pursuing online gaming and MMOs they just aren’t doing it in the US because MMOs don’t work here. To put some context on this Take-Two is known for games like Grand Theft Auto, BioShock, and Red Dead Redemption, so they aren’t exactly slouches when it comes to video games. I’ve had some time to really mull over my thoughts and feelings on this topic, so here is a consolidation of the most important points.

This is his exact quote:

We’re actively investing in online and MMOs, we’re just not doing it in the U.S. MMOs don’t work here. A couple of our competitors have found out that through very, very expensive lessons… at any given time 10 to 20 are successful in China and generating revenue.

There are a few weird things going on with this statement. The first and obvious question, why is he only thinking about the US and Chinese markets? I don’t know about everyone else but I sure know a lot of European and Canadian people who play MMOs, not to mention all the South Koreans who are also part of the larger Asian market. Maybe he just overlooked the rest of the MMO gaming world and happened to mention just the US and China. I really hope he didn’t intend to lump all the Asian countries in with China, and I REALLY hope he wasn’t intending to lump the rest of the world in with the US.

To support his claim Zelnick followed up by saying “How many MMOs have been successful in the U.S.? Two. World of Warcraft and EverQuest.” Now there is no arguing Everquest and World of Warcraft definitely are examples of successful games, but they certainly aren’t the only two. Eve Online is not only a successful subscription MMO but it also has been consistently growing throughout it’s lifespan (something WoW actually can’t claim). Another very successful subscription game is Ultima Online, and these are just two examples off the top of my head.

Additionally if you consider the fact he picked two sub based games it seems like for him the definition of success is having a sustaining and profitable subscription model. That’s a perfectly fine way to model success. It makes it even stranger he wouldn’t include Eve Online if that is his measure of success. It boggles my mind to consider how anyone can consider Eve Online to be anything but a success.

However, if that’s how he wants to define success then his choice of using China as an example of where MMOs are more often successful is really strange because the dominant model for MMOs in China is free to play. It’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges, especially when there are certainly more than two successful US MMOs if we include free to play and buy to play games.

Which brings us to the whole debate about how to judge the success of MMOs. With games like Rift and Star Wars: The Old Republic transitioned to free to play models does that automatically make them failures? Reportedly SWTOR has been doing better now after the addition of f2p than it was before, so it could be viewed as a success. However, the fact they had to change their model definitely can be argued as a failure. The same thing goes for Rift. Ever since they transitioned over the game has been booming, but I can see the argument for having to change at all being a failure. I am still not sure I would class either as a failure overall though.

If you start looking at free to play or buy to play games it can get even harder to tell what a success is since you can’t go off sub numbers. Guild Wars 2 has said a few times their gem store sales more than cover their costs and they have the most aggressive content schedule in MMOs currently. It’s really hard to see how GW2 isn’t a success. We are almost a year after the launch and they are doing so well they are focusing on giving content away instead of focusing on paid expansions.

In an interview with Massively Scott Hartsman (former Trion GM and CCO) talked about how the current business model for AAA MMOs is fundamentally broken and part of the reason is the development costs has risen exponentially over the last few years. While it might sound like a good thing companies are putting more money into MMOs, it puts greater strain on companies because it narrows the margin of error. We have gone from a model where a company could make mistakes and still have some room to cover.

In addition to the rise in costs player expectations have also drastically risen. It used to be a company could make a few mistakes but they could then learn from them and fix the mistakes and gamers would stick with them. Now it seems like as soon as a MMO has an issue a certain segment of players is out, and will go play something else. It’s not necessarily a bad thing gamers want more for their money, but it is another factor putting increased strain on game developers.

There is also something to be said for developers just not really being in touch with the MMO market as a whole. One example of devs being out of touch with the MMO community is SWTOR devs never expected people to play in one sitting for more than 3-4 hours at a time. I remember having a conversation with Cory Butler, Bioware Live Producer, at Pax East 2012 about that and being absolutely astonished. Even super casual players will have play times longer than that from time to time, and not being aware of something like that when you are making a MMO is a huge oversight.

It doesn’t end there either. Just in my general observations of MMOs in the last few years the standard life cyle is, a new MMO launches and tons of people buy it and start playing. Then a month or so later some percentage of players stop playing. Then the publisher sort of panics because for some reason they assumed it would just be clear sailing with no bumps in the road. Whereas, at least to me, it seems like they should plan for the drop off and have the ultimate goal to slowly grow the MMO over years. Instead it often feels like publishers just look at MMOs as quick money (after they launch) and if it doesn’t blow everything else out of the water they decide to abandon ship.

Personally I think the real measure of success should be if a game grows over time and if it is making enough to sustain itself. I get the argument about if a game lives up to expectations or not, but with publishers being so out of touch it seems a silly measure to go by. That goes double for living up to consumer’s expectations as well.

Atherblade Retreat

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A group of my friends came with me last night to checkout the new dungeon “Atherblade Retreat” in Guild Wars 2. It was quite an adventure!

Did we randomly wander into SWTOR??

After fighting through an event where you need to kill waves of pirates you run upstairs to this area, which has a dancing holo. This room was pretty funny since all of us had/do play SWTOR. Also the music in this room was a bit different than most of the dungeon. The music here sounded a lot like someone playing with the Unbreakable Choir Bell. It was a nice resting point to look around in the dungeon some.

Fighting the Asuran Frizz was a ton of fun. The fight starts pretty normally with Frizz and a couple of adds. Then he goes into the tube in the middle of the room and the real fun starts. There are two golems who run around and you need to dps them down while avoiding the pink beams of electrical death. After those two are dead you get walls of pink electrical death and two more golems. Then lastly walls and beams, with another two golems.

Overall the fight wasn’t too rough. It took some time to get the rhythm of the last phase down though because the walls and beams rotate at different speeds. Moving the camera around to look down on us helped a lot, and we got better at keeping the golems away from the walls and beams (they get buffs when they hit the walls and beams). I also had issues with sometimes not quite getting up to the top box on the stacks. Probably my giant Norn feet getting in the way again.

I didn’t think to get a screen of the mini jumping puzzle during the dungeon but we were all a bit disappointed in it. Basically it is more of a bouncing puzzle than a jumping challenge. If you played Dragon Ball at all you were introduced to the stem vents which will propel you around. The mini jumping puzzle was basically bouncing from one vent to the next to get to the next area. Despite the reduced difficulty I still managed to miss the last jump and fall to my death (my giant Norn feet must have shrunk there).

Then finally we reach Mai Trin and her First Mate. At first we tried killing the First Mate first, but Mai Trin just rezed him right up so that was not a good tactic. The better plan was dpsing Horrik down to about half his life and then focusing on Mai Trin.

Being in melee with Mair Trin is scary.

Mai Trin herself is a bit of a pain and I am not entirely sure her mechanics were working 100% correctly. She has stacks of shielding which reduce her damage taken and also with a certain amounts of stacks she gets immune to bleeds, stuns, and knockbacks. The only way to remove the stacks is to get her to stand in the lightening circles the First Mate shoots. Except she also teleports around and when you can’t stun or knock her into them… well it can get pretty interesting.

The part I think might have been working improperly is at the beginning of the fight, and after each cannon phase, she would start with either 10, 6, 2, or 0 stacks. The only real issue was when she would start with 10 stacks because she would be immune to everything. In those cases getting her into the lightening circles long enough to remove a stack or two took a fair amount of effort.

There also were some issues with sometimes when Mai Trin teleported around, our target would automatically switch to the First Mate, which is why we left him at half health at the beginning instead of a lower percentage. Overall the fight is a lot of fun. The cannon phases are mostly just about paying attention and planning your movement and dodges appropriately.

Overall the whole dungeon was a ton of fun and I am looking forward to going back again 🙂

Dragon Bash Is Sort Of A Letdown

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Arlee

When the Dragon Bash event was first announced I was really excited to experience it and see all the new things Arenanet had come up with. I must admit after the weekend I am a bit disappointed. Don’t get me wrong the holographic dragon flying around Lion’s Arch is pretty cool, and the fireworks are pretty neat as well. My annoyance really centers around three specific things: the cost of the holographic dragon wings, moa races, and the Dragon Ball.

To earn the holographic wings through the festival you have to collect 100,000 candies. How do you get these candies? Well you can get 1 from every Dragon Piñata you break (which is the most anemic piñata I have ever heard of) or from Dragon Coffers which drop from mobs out in the world or from destroying the dragon holograms. Thankfully there are a variety of methods to gain these candies but you still only seem to get one candy per thing. Not to mention Dragon Coffers don’t always have candy in them. It just feels in the end the price for the wings is a bit high.

Moa Races are fun because it is pretty amusing to watch them run around and try to guess the right one. However, for me the annoyance is in the fact you need a certain number of wins to get the related achievement. In addition you are betting on the moas so if you want the achievement the Moa Races are basically a money sink. Thankfully you do get some money back if your moa gets second or third, but unless you are very lucky you will leave with a lighter purse.

My last complaint is the Dragon Ball, though the issue is only slightly an Arenanet issue and more of a player issue. The set-up of Dragon Ball is actually a really interesting one. You join a five person team to fight against another team. Everyone starts with just one ability but there are orbs around which will grant additional abilities. There are also other orbs which will return health and will power you up. In addition there are tunnels to run through and air jets which will shoot you all over the map. If everyone in a fight is playing, Dragon Ball is a ton of fun… If.

Over time players have started looking at MMOs with less of a “what can I do which will be fun” outlook and more of a “what’s the fastest way for me to get x achievement”. I personally don’t really get that style of play, for me I like to play games to have fun and achievements are just a dandy bonus, but it is valid for people to just have the goal of getting whatever achievement they want. The issue is many people I have come across in Dragon Ball queue in and then just stand there waiting for the match to end. They don’t attack anyone, or try to dodge or anything. They are just there to be fodder.

Now I agree with Arenanet making the requirement for the achievement be participation in matches instead of wins. If players had to win 20 matches we’d have a whole other can of worms on our hands. What they should have done was to allow people to queue up with other people for the fights. It probably would have made the queues longer but at least then you could be sure to have a team who will at least try to play, for those of us who actually like to do things in MMOs.

Aside from these things I am mostly happy with Dragon Bash, just a couple of tweaks could have made it an all around exciting event, instead of being mostly good with a few large downsides.

Stress Test Time!

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Arlee

This week’s Wildstar Wednesday revealed they are close to doing their first stress test. We don’t currently know when this will happen but everyone invited for the weekend will receive an invite a few days before so they can download and patch the game before the stress test starts.

There was also the following tidbit:

Everyone that gets an invite into the Stress Test and makes a good faith attempt to log into the game during the test will be guaranteed an invite into a future (much more stable) Closed Beta test as a thank you. I need your help in breaking the server, and we want to invite you back to play when I’m not trying to do mean things to the hardware. So help us break everything as many times as possible this weekend, and we’ll make it up to you with a real beta invite in the future.

Basically if you want into the beta and get invited to this stress test… Don’t blow it off! If everything goes to plan, the stress test weekend will be a REALLY bad weekend for playing but will give them a ton of useful information to get ready for launch (oh please oh please let there be a game that doesn’t have severe server issues at launch).

One curiosity, in general you do not see stress tests until much further along in closed betas (we are only about a month into this folks). There are a couple of ways to interpret this. Either we are much closer to launch than any of us thought; or they are being super proactive. Personally I hope it’s the second option and they make the most of the time they have.

Here is a link to the full article for anyone interested, there is also some interesting info about what exactly a live producer does.
http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/news/wildstar_wednesday_beta_stress_test.php

Neverwinter’s Gateway

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Arlee

During Beta Weekend 4 Neverwinter let players preview their Gateway web-portal which is basically your access to all your character info from a webpage.

After you first log in you are taken to the Character Select screen where you see a listing of your characters and can pick which one you want to select. In this example I only had one character made. After you select which character you want to look at you are taken to the Gateway Home Screen.

As you can see my character was only level 9 at the time I took this picture so Professions is greyed out because you need to be level 11 to learn professions. Also I was not in a guild when I took that screen.

Here’s the Character Sheet page. I am assuming at some point the red outline of what looks vaguely like a minotaur will be replaced with an actual 3D model of what your character looks like. You can see all your stats in the bottom section and if you mouse over your items you can look at what the stats are (which helps for finding upgrades through the AH).

If you look at the left edge of this screen you will also see there is a menu which will take you to any of the other pages without having to go back to the home screen.

A unique feature of the Gateway is you can level your professions through it! The interface is really similar to what it is in game, the only downside is the duration to complete each task is longer through the gateway. You would really only want to level professions through the gateway if you are not able to login for some reason and you want to still want to level your professions.

You can also post and buy things off the AH through the gateway.

This is the view of your inventory you get when you want to put something up. Of course when you mouse over an item you get a pop-up that tells you all the detail of the item.

If you are in a guild there are a variety of things you can look at and check on from the gateway.

You can add events from the Gateway and update the information (if you have the ability to do those things in game).

What else could you possibly want to do through a web-portal? Well how about send mail to people in game!

I am not sure if once this goes live you will be able to look-up other players. You couldn’t during the beta weekend but it could have just not have been active.