AGDC: BioWare’s Gordon Walton on WoW Lessons
A great summary from what looks to have been a great talk: BioWare’s Gordon Walton Gives 12 Lessons from WoW. I agree with most of it, except this: “…He didn’t think it was relevant that WoW doesn’t delete inactive characters — the ‘namespace’ freed by deleting characters makes them worth deleting.” Never delete a character that someone cares about, no matter how long ago they played it. If you have to delete characters, only remove low level characters that haven’t been played in a long time. If you must go further, remove the names of long-unplayed characters, but leave the characters intact and let the returning player rename them.
I’ll use just one of the several examples in my MMO career: A while back, a good dozen of me and my friends wanted to go back to Final Fantasy XI. That is, until we realized that our characters we had spent months playing were completely gone. They lost a good chunk of change from us, and I know of others who have done the same. You simply cannot delete a character that a player has invested a lot of time and effort in, or you will lose a lot of goodwill and a lot of potential money.
Agreed. Having to start from scratch and play through content you’ve already experienced is disheartening, unless that’s specifically what you like to do.
the freeing the namespace idea of just renaming the character (rename it to something super generic internally like username-somerandomnumber) and forcing the user to rename it when they reactivate it is a excelent idea. Hell, if you’re worried about db sizes or something, make it so you can store the character data offline, then when they reactivate, just pull it back from the archive. Use the generic transports that I assume server moves use.
Thesis Statement : Build us a new genre, this ones a hoax.
This is one of the major parts of the games that make me quit playing. Why pay $15 bucks a month to play by yourself when there are single player RPG’s out there that wont cost you a dime after the initial game box investment? I hate playing a game and looking to find a group and meet people, make friends, talk, socialize, do something other than the gind, oh, did I mention talking and socializing? For me, it first started in EverQuest and then got worse and worse as more single player (in nature) MMO’s hit the market. I would be looking for a group, and would be told to go solo this or go quad (EverQuest as I was a wizard) that.
I think developers are missing the point of why MUD’s and Ultima Online or Merridan 59 were created in the first place, and instead have gotten so damn money hungry it not about preserving the genre, but altering it to something that it just there to make as much money as possible. Much like what Jeff Freeman was talking about in his Dash for the Cash article. That is what the industry is treating the MMO genre like, its not about making the games you want (as a developer) or that players are asking for (across multiple boards and now the blogs), it about making games that will ‘hook’, ‘addict’, or other industry slang for this genre. It about keeping them in the game as long as you possibly can. All the while trying not to piss them off in the first week to thirty days (for word of mouth advertising) so they don’t destroy your game viral chances.
I just can’t fathom why we are taking the genre backwards (in my eyes), moving it towards a single player game, than a multiplayer (M M O) game. It seems like all those other people in the game are just there to ask questions if you get stuck solo’ing something. Solo activity does little to nothing to promote socialization, cooperation, or bonds of friendship. It also does little to help foster a community that is ready for the end-game once they reach it (casual or not). No wonder we have 24k deaths in EverQuest II after just 3 years of being released. The developers don’t promote activities that make smarter players (also the nil death penalty factor), they just hoard them to the end-game and let them die.
Maybe at age 35, I am too old for this genre. Seems my Generation X is being left behind for the new Generation D that is at credit-card holding age. Or that what I enjoy is no longer that main focus of the genre. I don’t say that EverQuest has it all write, but they did do things that I would argue was more healthy for the genre than World of Warcraft does.
Here’s to hoping that in my lifetime, the genre gets some balls and gets back to its roots. J. R. R. Tolkien, Dungeons & Dragons (pen and paper) and MUD’s.
For me there has to be a balance. I often don’t have the time to get online, find a group and get something done in what little time I have remaining. Sometimes, I like to be able to get online, have a quick romp through the world, and feel like I’ve accomplished something.
Forcing a player in either direction is not the best route to take (usually), but neither is having one without the other. There’s got to be an even mix of group play and single player play to keep me playing.
I think laethyn has it right, the thing that WoW got right is that you are not forced to group. Yes, grouping opens up other content in the group (instances, raids and the tougher quests) but it is still very possible to hit the top level solo’ing.
That said, there are social aspects in the game that are available and visible to you when you’re playing on an MMO even if you’re not in a group . Chat channels are sometimes interesting and I often just enjoy helping out another playing having a tough time or receiving help if I get a bad pull.
Tobold in his blog http://tobolds.blogspot.com/ said pretty much the same thing, there’s a social aspect to these games even when solo’ing.
“Maybe at age 35, I am too old for this genre. Seems my Generation X is being left behind for the new Generation D that is at credit-card holding age. Or that what I enjoy is no longer that main focus of the genre.”
I feel your pain…I’m 58
Say what you will, at least WoW isn’t Habbo Hotel. The more I hear about Web 2.0 gaming, the more depressed I get. Gamasutra’s writeup on the AGDC keynote by Sulka Haro on Habbo Hotel: “My personal favorite is ‘gameless game’,” he remarked…”
Now there’s something to look forward to, gameless games…
I personally hate when I am forced to group. The “it’s massive multiplayer, group with people you dolt” argument doesn’t work, either. I play solo in a shared world for a lot of other reasons than to directly work with someone else–my sense of achievement is heightened, the complexity of the experience is enhanced, I can meet like-minded people, the world is more dynamic, the social implications are huge, and so on.
I often play games “with” real life friends, but most of the time I’m only talking to them while soloing.
Also, one of the games you mention, Ultima Online, was completely soloable to “max.” In fact, it was easier that way. The need to interact with other players was only driven by the fact that if you didn’t, you’d suffer at the hand of other players so frequently that the game would become unfun. You were never artificially forced to play with other people; instead, there were other benefits for doing so that were less tangibly apparent.
The takeaway there may be that we need to make PvE experiences more cooperative at their basest level rather than imposing some artificial grouping requirement. Major world events in games like EverQuest II promote players working together without ever having to group together, for example. I think this is one of the directions the genre needs to head (creating more reasons to work with or against other players, even if it’s not 100% direct).
That said, I also would be cool with never requiring players to group with each other formally. It’s possible, but it’s an opinion of mine that is probably controversial enough that it doesn’t get implemented.
This is more in line with what I was trying to convey. I also don’t want a 100% forced group mechanic in the game just to ‘get people together’. Classes, and therefore players should have very defined roles in the world and the world has to NEED those roles in different situations. So players can get past obstacles.
Even without doing the D&D stat system and combat model, can’t we at least allow people to pick a fighter and then ‘choose’ weather to make it a offensive or defensive fighter. One class two roles, but can’t master or really be both. This goes the same for all other archetype classes. Developers are defining our roles and not allowing use to play our class the way we would like.
Why put a struggle of Evil vs. Good in a game, if there is zero effect on the players or chances for players to fight for that struggle.
Why do we reward guilds that just amass great numbers, with little regard for how the game was meant to be played (EverQuest and others)… Why haven’t there been more Firiona Vie servers built… I know that EverQuest II is making enough money to support building one, heck we all know WoW has enough money to build one-hundred of them or so… Why have there not been any (Perma Death servers) just to see what players would attempt them, and if they could reach max level.
Players could reach max level without deaths, but because death has not ill effect, players are free to take on risks greater than they should be taken, the game becomes a game of trial and error, instead of one about learning the enemies abilities and then countering them, before you enter combat. We, if have too group, try to do it with as little people as possible, because we don’t want to waste time waiting to form a large group, when we could be advancing without the need of anybody else. The games are having players become a bit ‘too self reliant’ that a lot of players can’t get a group when they want to or ‘have too’ for content.
Why don’t we see raids at the lower levels, I remember reading about a guild in EverQuest that took a bunch of High and Wood elves and raided crushbone… but that was not a raid zone, and thus most don’t need to do such activities.
Going even farther: never delete a customer, even if they currently aren’t paying you anything right now (and even if they never will pay you anything ever again).
Successful community sites beg people to join, offer all sorts of toys to play with, most offer outsiders a look (but insist you join in order to participate beyond that), try to keep poking with reminders to keep you active. They NEVER push away a user.
Their core business is to herd-up an audience, then sell access to it - mostly to 3rd party companies. Ultimately, their users aren’t their customers, but their product.
They offer features to users for the same reason meat-packing plants buy refrigerators - and it’s not because the meat is a customer.
If Best Buy sells shelf space to EA so as to sell a violent sports game to me… is it just my conceit to assume I’m ‘the customer’ and that game is the ‘product’? Will it make me more violent even though it is sports? I don’t know!
But I know Best Buy is happy to have me walking around their store - free!
The lack of any indication at all that the MMO industry even suspects there’s some value in the audience we constantly assemble, then scatter, and always under-serve by, really… I can’t help but think we’re doing something dumb, there.
Or else I’m just missing something obvious to everyone but me.
Boon, you’re spot on about it being all about retention: Keeping the player interested in the game for as long as you can.
Support for solo play is in service to that: there are times when players find themselves between “regular groups”, and times they want to play when their homies aren’t, just right then, available.
Lengthy “LFG!”-prerequisites to play, lack of support for those ‘tween-group times in general, fewer options for “other than group-play” available for when you’re just not in the mood for that again… that is, no solo-play, means fewer things to do.
If there are n things to do in one game, then a game with n+1 things to do will hold your interest longer - all other things being equal.
Here’s the thing:
Olde EQ made the assumption that supporting solo play or supporting group play was an exclusive decision: that it couldn’t be both. From there it assumed group play was more interesting than solo play, so that’s the way it went.
WoW and EQ2, on the other hand, have group-level mobs and support both solo and group play simultaneously. Sort of with opposite approaches to the delivery, but that’s whole ‘nother topic.
Personally, I think solo play in a multi-player environment alone provides sufficient interest to support an MMO - and of course so does group-play, alone - but why not provide as much interest as possible?
Annnnnd, I think ultimately solo-play is still under-supported at the high end, pretty much universally. At max level, they’re all still group-only games, aren’t they?
Hey Jeff,
I agree that long periods of LFG are not a good thing, and I also agree that solo or group play, together, has not been done well enough I feel that players look to group when they can and solo when they can’t. Or, I’ve just been finding the wrong servers as of late. Seems like when I get in to World of Warcraft or EverQuest II (currently re-playing). That people would rather solo first and only group when their quests require it.
Soloing is so productive that it is what players look forward to doing first. This is where they progress in experience and thus the ‘grind’. It’s only when their quest require a group that they will go around hunting for a group, often sending blind invitations for a group trying to get the people they need to do said quest. Once they quest objective is finished, the group normally disbands with little care at all. Since advancement, is primarily from soloing the game, not grouping, socializing, or getting away from the grind. This is where you will find the majority of the players in today’s MMO’s till you reach the end game.
At the end game you’ve got two choices, join the raiding nature of the end game and collect the loot yourself, or farm gold and buy it. Raiding is beyond just group mechanics and sometimes has been being introduced at a decent enough pace since a couple levels before max (for those who like raiding). Farming is an solo activity, where the main goal is to obtain the gold or platinum needed to buy the items you can’t afford in time investments to obtain yourself.
If we make combat more of a game and less of a button mashing fest, we could ‘slow’ down the pace of advancement (levels) and still provide ‘entertainment’. I thought DDO did a great job here (although instanced) as it normally was a group of players vs. a group of mobs. They were not artificially linked, like EverQuest II. They seemed to be with life, as they would attack you from line of sight, not this 10m aggression bubble. Get combat to become hectic (fear of the unknown), faster paced (decision making / not button mashing as they refresh), tactical (critical hits are critical, not just something that could happen 5 to 10 times in each combat encounter).
I personally would say to get the reliance off of solely Tank / DPS / Healer and make all classes equal in DPS and then give them their roles as described in fantasy novels, or the tombs of Dungeons & Dragons (pen and paper), or another role playing game that fits your theme. If everyone is pretty equal in DPS you’ve someone cured the PvP headaches. People now can worry about their roles in combat beyond the generic Tank / DPS / Healer. This just might mean that clerics can get off their hind ends and participate in melee combat. Wizards and the like could start getting their ‘other non-damaging’ but tactical and combat round changing spells, and Fighters could just maybe use ‘collision detection’ to be a tank instead of ‘button mashing taunt’.
Once we make combat the fun game, where its heart pounding action (solo or not), to liken that of Counter-Strike or other popular online games. I don’t see MMO’s staying as popular. I may be an oddball, but I am getting tired of watching a 2d UI, mashing buttons as they refresh to either stay alive in a combat round, or to get a victory with as many hit points left as possible incase of an add or to minimize downtime. There is nothing really dynamic in our DPS systems. We’ll normally hit for around 90% of the time for about the same damage per hit. There is no thinking needed in combat, just mash the buttons, sometimes in a particular order (each and every fight) to complete the encounter. We throw in things like stuns and other ‘you can’t do this or that for x seconds’ just to get us thinking about fleeing a combat encounter. But now mobs are on leashes and we exploit it to stay alive. Warriors have just as many buttons to mash as the spell casters (Wizards / Clerics), are we still a warrior or a heavy armor, sword wielding wizard?
Mobs abuse all the same rules we do, and collision detection while in combat could be a great way for players in a group setting to ‘setup the battlefield’. Warrior could use that heavy armor they so proudly wear to actually block an enemy’s advancement towards the weak (wizards and rogues). Clerics also wear heavy armor for a reason and it is not just to look cool twiddling their thumbs waiting to cast a heal spell. Although developers could say, hey, they can solo too! If you want a bit more advanced tactics, maybe throw in line of sight requirements for spells and ranged weapons. I mean should an arrow really bypass the tanks armor and body and somehow magically find its way to the flesh of the enemy.
There are a lot of things I think developers and games give as ‘too much information’ to the players. Like in EverQuest II for example, the ability to tell right off the bat if a mob is tied to a group of other mobs. You know, it should almost be common sense that if I enter in to the lair of the Gnolls. That I should expect to have them helping each other out and not just be able to walk through the lair picking off one after the other, or just taking on 2 or 3 at a time.
How about just for starters… if we have to keep the easier to design DPS model of combat as we see in almost all games currently. We put in a wider number range of damage. I’ve always like the fact that Dungeons & Dragons had a wide range of damage that could be dealt out. Also to this system we would need to put the hit / miss at a range less than what seems to be close to 90% now. I mean if I am taking in a white con critter, I would expect this to be down around 60% to 70%, this number could be adjusted, but lets get some reason to respect the combat encounter and thus the mobs. Solo’ing is not really that enjoyable in the current MMO combat model.
Lessons learned…
There’s a lot of talk about learning the lessons from other games. In particular, people want to learn what made WoW so successful. Of course, this is the game industry so this usually means, “I want to make a copy/clone of the game and wear nice m…