If you followed the news about Star Wars: The Old Republic, you might have heard that they retracted a previous statement that they would need a million players to be profitable, and lowered that break-even subscription number to 500,000. How misleading that can be is well visible in the reaction of Keen: Anyone on this planet knows that SWTOR will sell well and do fine on subscriptions. It’s Star Wars and Bioware. If WAR is still alive with even 50k subscribers for this long then SWTOR will do 500k sustained for at least a few months.
I do not think that if John Riccitiello speaks of half a million subscribers to be profitable, he means "half a million for a few months". The important question is how long the payback period is. Imagine that a MMORPG cost $100 million to make. The company sells a million copies at $50 each, and thus already recovers $50 million. Now imagine that they make $5 per player per month. In that case they would need to keep that 1 million player subscribed for 10 months before they break even. 10 months is the payback period for 1 million subscribers for that game. If subscription numbers drop quickly way before the 10 months are reached, it will take longer until the investment is paid back, and in the worst case the game never gets there.
So I have to say I agree only with half of Keen's statement. Yes, SWTOR will probably sell well, because both Star Wars and Bioware are very strong brands, which means many people will buy that game just out of trust. Hell, *I* will probably buy that game just out of trust. But as even John Riccitiello describes the game as "light sabers instead of swords, if you will.", I would say that there is a distinctive possibility that the game turns out to be yet another "kill 10 foozles" MMORPG. If players early on get an impression that this is basically the same game that they are already playing (and I'm not even saying which game that would be, as there are now so many games of that type), just with more voiceovers, then a subscription number curve like WAR had, with an early and steep decline is certainly possible. If players expect the second coming, and all they get is the same game with "light sabers instead of swords", they might get severely disappointed. And disappointed players are not good for the bottom line.
I have serious doubts whether EA, of all people, understands how much larger the demands of MMORPG players for novelty are. EA is used to players who apparently don't mind buying the same EA Sports game again, with only the last digit of the year printed on the box having changed. And nobody ever complained to EA that the latest shooter they brought out basically has the same user interface, controls, and gameplay as every other shooter out there. MMORPG players don't tick like that. I'm not a betting man, but if you'd ask me what the next big thing in MMORPGs will be, I'd put my money on Guild Wars 2, and not on SWTOR.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Not a blogroll
I don't have a blogroll, mainly because I believe it is better to link to specific posts on other blogs with commentary than to just link to the whole blog. Also blogs come and go, and it is hard to keep a permanent list updated. But I do follow various blogs with the help of the Google Reader, and I just updated that list, throwing out several blogs that hadn't written any posts in 2011 yet. So I found a working OPML to HTML converter, exported the Google Reader subscription lists as OPML, and can thus now post that list here:
- *Killed in a smiling accident*
- Bio Break
- Blessing of Kings
- Boathammer
- Broken Toys
- BullCopra
- Death To Questing!
- Deuwowlity
- Elder Game: MMO game development
- Epic Slant
- Game by Night
- Greedy goblin
- I Have Touched the Sky
- Keen and Graev's Gaming Blog
- Kill Ten Rats
- Massively Multiplayer Fallout
- MMO Melting Pot
- MMO-Champion
- MMOCrunch
- Muckbeast
- Nils MMO Blog
- Player Versus Developer
- Psychochild's Blog
- Psynister's Notebook
- Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog
- pwnwear
- pΘtshΘt
- Raging Monkeys
- Raph's Website
- Righteous Orbs
- Scarybooster
- Stabbed Up
- Stylish Corpse
- T.R. Redskies
- The Ancient Gaming Noob
- The Common Sense Gamer
- The Pink Pigtail Inn
- The Psychology of Video Games
- Tish Tosh Tesh
- Troll Racials are Overpowered
- We Fly Spitfires - MMORPG Blog
- Welcome to Spinksville!
- West Karana
- World of Matticus
- | Heartlessgamer.com |
PvP business plan
Rohan from Blessing of Kings has an interesting business plan for a PvP game: Let the people who are being ganked play for free, but charge those who want to attack other players. And charge even more for protection from being attacked. Brilliant!
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
The rewards of grouping
Soloing is easy, grouping is hard. Everybody knows that. Well, at least everybody who thinks that World of Warcraft was the first MMORPG out there. Those who have been around a bit longer are maybe aware that soloing being easier than grouping is actually a complete reversal from how things were a decade ago. In Everquest in 2001 players started out soloing at level 1, but while they became stronger with every level, the monsters became stronger even more so. At some point even the "green" monsters several levels lower than you, the lowest that would still give you xp, were too hard for you to solo. People grouped not because of a dungeon finder or anything, but because most classes needed a group to kill any monsters that gave xp. If you think about it, being stronger when several people help you than if you are alone makes sense.
As soon as you make a game which can be soloed up to the level cap, that concept of needing friends to help you goes out of the window. Why would you bother to get a group together to kill 10 foozles for a quest if you can do it much faster alone? That thought quickly leads to "elite" monsters, which again are too strong to solo. And then you need better loot on these elite monsters to make players interested in making the extra effort to get a group together. And before long you find yourself in a system where players at the level cap raid for epics, while having leveled solo most of the way to that level cap. For any given monster it is obviously easier to kill it in a group than to kill it solo, but now we have strictly separated parts of the game, one in which only soloing makes sense, and another in which only grouping makes sense. And then you can reverse difficulty and make the grouping part harder than the soloing.
Of course now the same people who grumbled over "forced grouping" in Everquest will complain that soloing only gets them to the nominal level cap, while the best epic rewards are still unattainable for them in group only dungeons. They would love to be able to keep soloing up to killing the final raid boss in the final dungeon. Other players prefer going to dungeons in groups, and consider the leveling part of the game to be an annoying obstacle on the way there. But would these players still group if the same rewards could be had in a solo variant of the dungeons?
Raph Koster says that "Community ties are the single biggest predictor of retention. And in the subscription game (really, in the microtransaction game too, though the effect is more complicated), retention = money. Therefore, community ties = money." But that would mean that the people who claim that WoW has the worst community ever can't be right, because it is really hard to argue that WoW has a problem with making money.
Somewhere there is a contradiction. Even the people who like groups think that game developers need to either force people into groups, or at least offer group only content with better rewards to encourage people to group. How can you have in the same game a better player retention through stronger community ties, and a frequently expressed feeling of players resenting the other players which with they are forced to group to get certain rewards or see certain content?
I believe that the strict separation of the soloing part and the grouping part of content is harmful here. I would prefer a game in which everything is soloable, but where soloing is hard, and grouping is the obviously more efficient and easier way to progress. Instead of having any content which you are forced to group for, all the content should be set up in a way that players have the choice of doing it solo, or doing it faster and more efficient in a group. Instead of dividing soloers and groupers in two strictly separate camps playing through separate content, players would sort themselves naturally, playing solo one days when they feel unsociable or don't have the time to set up a group, and playing in a group another day.
As soon as you make a game which can be soloed up to the level cap, that concept of needing friends to help you goes out of the window. Why would you bother to get a group together to kill 10 foozles for a quest if you can do it much faster alone? That thought quickly leads to "elite" monsters, which again are too strong to solo. And then you need better loot on these elite monsters to make players interested in making the extra effort to get a group together. And before long you find yourself in a system where players at the level cap raid for epics, while having leveled solo most of the way to that level cap. For any given monster it is obviously easier to kill it in a group than to kill it solo, but now we have strictly separated parts of the game, one in which only soloing makes sense, and another in which only grouping makes sense. And then you can reverse difficulty and make the grouping part harder than the soloing.
Of course now the same people who grumbled over "forced grouping" in Everquest will complain that soloing only gets them to the nominal level cap, while the best epic rewards are still unattainable for them in group only dungeons. They would love to be able to keep soloing up to killing the final raid boss in the final dungeon. Other players prefer going to dungeons in groups, and consider the leveling part of the game to be an annoying obstacle on the way there. But would these players still group if the same rewards could be had in a solo variant of the dungeons?
Raph Koster says that "Community ties are the single biggest predictor of retention. And in the subscription game (really, in the microtransaction game too, though the effect is more complicated), retention = money. Therefore, community ties = money." But that would mean that the people who claim that WoW has the worst community ever can't be right, because it is really hard to argue that WoW has a problem with making money.
Somewhere there is a contradiction. Even the people who like groups think that game developers need to either force people into groups, or at least offer group only content with better rewards to encourage people to group. How can you have in the same game a better player retention through stronger community ties, and a frequently expressed feeling of players resenting the other players which with they are forced to group to get certain rewards or see certain content?
I believe that the strict separation of the soloing part and the grouping part of content is harmful here. I would prefer a game in which everything is soloable, but where soloing is hard, and grouping is the obviously more efficient and easier way to progress. Instead of having any content which you are forced to group for, all the content should be set up in a way that players have the choice of doing it solo, or doing it faster and more efficient in a group. Instead of dividing soloers and groupers in two strictly separate camps playing through separate content, players would sort themselves naturally, playing solo one days when they feel unsociable or don't have the time to set up a group, and playing in a group another day.
Thought-provoking or trolling?
It nearly impossible to write anything about MMORPGs with which everybody agrees, given how very different opinions are on that subject. But even if it was possible, I would argue that it wouldn't be helpful for a blog to make posts like that: Provoking thoughts, and as a result provoking an interesting discussion, is something that I would say differentiates a good blog post from a bad one. So when I manage to pull off a post like yesterday's, where half of the commenters consider that vision of the future of MMORPGs as a horror vision, and the other half can't wait to play that, I consider that a job well done.
Nevertheless I got a Buzz telling me that my post had "gone too far", and I had to delete a comment accusing me of "trolling". Now I'd consider the wisdom of Wikipedia stating that: "Application of the term troll is highly subjective. Some readers may characterize a post as trolling, while others may regard the same post as a legitimate contribution to the discussion, even if controversial. Like any pejorative term, it can be used as an ad hominem strategy to discredit an opposing position by attacking its proponent. Calling someone a troll makes a negative assumption about that person's motives.". Depending on what definition you use for trolling, anything which is provocative could be labeled as a troll post, which given my previous definition would mean that every good blog post is trolling. I would say that being provocative isn't a sufficient definition of trolling. As Wikipedia says, it is far too easy to simply label anyone you don't agree with as a troll to discredit him.
Looking at various definitions of trolling, one frequently listed attribute of trolling is being off-topic. Now I could claim that my blog is about everything, so all my posts are on topic. But even if you'd disagree with that, you'd have to admit that provocative posts on MMORPGs are very much on topic here. If I'd post a sarcastic post on the Republican health care reform repeal being a way to turn "Hell, NO!" into law, I'd be far more vulnerable to an accusation of that being a troll post, because politics are off-topic on this blog.
Another important part of the definition of trolling is that it deliberately provokes emotions instead of thoughts. Of course that isn't always black and white, a post can provoke both emotions *and* thoughts. But I'd argue that my personal blogging style, which is heavy on text and supportive arguments, and light on profanity, is primarily aimed at getting people to think. Just because MMORPG players are highly tribal and tend to react emotionally if somebody publicly dislikes their favorite game doesn't make every MMORPG review a troll post.
After years of comment moderation I'd say I can spot a troll comment, but of course that remains subjective. One relatively sure sign is troll comments being often short, to the point of being one-liners, and often contain insults. "Learn2play n00b" is a troll comment I'd delete, while somebody writing an argument why he thinks that "bad" isn't a valid style of playing is not trolling, even if he disagrees with me, and thus I let his comments stand. I should get somewhat more aggressive with people frequently and deliberately derailing threads through off-topic remarks (/wave Nils), but often I wished I had the technical means to *move* such a comment to a new thread instead of just having the choice to delete them or not.
As I said at the start, opinions on what a MMORPG should be vary widely. I have my own vision of what I'd like MMORPGs to be, and I have an analytical mind which sometimes makes me think I spotted some trend or development. This blog is here for me to express these thoughts of mine, being fully aware that some people will disagree with my vision, or dislike developments I describe. And the comment section is here for you to express your thoughts on the topics I describe, whether you agree with me or not. Any intelligent discussion is welcome here. I will keep trying to be thought-provoking, but how emotionally provocative that is to you very much depends on your own attitude towards my by now rather well-known general stance on MMORPGs. Not only do I not want to troll you and provoke angry emotions in you, I'd go so far as to say that your anger isn't really welcome here. If you start foaming at the mouth every time somebody even mentions a certain highly successful MMORPG, or talks about casual games or play styles, maybe this simply isn't the best spot for you to hang out at. I've learned which blogs not to read to keep my blood pressure down, and can only recommend you to do the same.
Nevertheless I got a Buzz telling me that my post had "gone too far", and I had to delete a comment accusing me of "trolling". Now I'd consider the wisdom of Wikipedia stating that: "Application of the term troll is highly subjective. Some readers may characterize a post as trolling, while others may regard the same post as a legitimate contribution to the discussion, even if controversial. Like any pejorative term, it can be used as an ad hominem strategy to discredit an opposing position by attacking its proponent. Calling someone a troll makes a negative assumption about that person's motives.". Depending on what definition you use for trolling, anything which is provocative could be labeled as a troll post, which given my previous definition would mean that every good blog post is trolling. I would say that being provocative isn't a sufficient definition of trolling. As Wikipedia says, it is far too easy to simply label anyone you don't agree with as a troll to discredit him.
Looking at various definitions of trolling, one frequently listed attribute of trolling is being off-topic. Now I could claim that my blog is about everything, so all my posts are on topic. But even if you'd disagree with that, you'd have to admit that provocative posts on MMORPGs are very much on topic here. If I'd post a sarcastic post on the Republican health care reform repeal being a way to turn "Hell, NO!" into law, I'd be far more vulnerable to an accusation of that being a troll post, because politics are off-topic on this blog.
Another important part of the definition of trolling is that it deliberately provokes emotions instead of thoughts. Of course that isn't always black and white, a post can provoke both emotions *and* thoughts. But I'd argue that my personal blogging style, which is heavy on text and supportive arguments, and light on profanity, is primarily aimed at getting people to think. Just because MMORPG players are highly tribal and tend to react emotionally if somebody publicly dislikes their favorite game doesn't make every MMORPG review a troll post.
After years of comment moderation I'd say I can spot a troll comment, but of course that remains subjective. One relatively sure sign is troll comments being often short, to the point of being one-liners, and often contain insults. "Learn2play n00b" is a troll comment I'd delete, while somebody writing an argument why he thinks that "bad" isn't a valid style of playing is not trolling, even if he disagrees with me, and thus I let his comments stand. I should get somewhat more aggressive with people frequently and deliberately derailing threads through off-topic remarks (/wave Nils), but often I wished I had the technical means to *move* such a comment to a new thread instead of just having the choice to delete them or not.
As I said at the start, opinions on what a MMORPG should be vary widely. I have my own vision of what I'd like MMORPGs to be, and I have an analytical mind which sometimes makes me think I spotted some trend or development. This blog is here for me to express these thoughts of mine, being fully aware that some people will disagree with my vision, or dislike developments I describe. And the comment section is here for you to express your thoughts on the topics I describe, whether you agree with me or not. Any intelligent discussion is welcome here. I will keep trying to be thought-provoking, but how emotionally provocative that is to you very much depends on your own attitude towards my by now rather well-known general stance on MMORPGs. Not only do I not want to troll you and provoke angry emotions in you, I'd go so far as to say that your anger isn't really welcome here. If you start foaming at the mouth every time somebody even mentions a certain highly successful MMORPG, or talks about casual games or play styles, maybe this simply isn't the best spot for you to hang out at. I've learned which blogs not to read to keep my blood pressure down, and can only recommend you to do the same.
Monday, January 31, 2011
World of Warcraft in 2020
It is the year 2020 and World of Warcraft has 20 million players, a hundred times a many as the closest competitor. How did a 15-year old game manage to climb to such a dominant position? After a meteoric rise, there was a period of stagnation nearly a decade ago, during the time of the Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm expansions. Anything Blizzard tried to get people to play together failed: Easy dungeons, hard dungeons, automatic group finding, added guild perks, all these measures only increased the amount of acrimony in the community. "Pickup group" became a kind of a curse word, and dungeon queues grew to 2 hours length, as most tanks and healers quit the game or switched to DPS, fed up of constantly being blamed for the faults of others. As raiding died due to lack of tanks and healers, only 3 guilds ever managed to finish the final Cataclysm raid encounter, in spite of repeated nerfs.
The breakthrough came in 2012, with the 4th expansion, as Blizzard had realized a fundamental truth: Players simply do not want to play with others. Having always been good at "borrowing" ideas from other games, Blizzard took the henchman concept from Guild Wars, and enabled players to do dungeons and raids solo, accompanied only by NPC henchmen. That concept was expanded with time, and today players exclusively solo playing a raid group of 5 to 10 characters, being able to control one of them at will, while the AI does a great job at playing the other 4 to 9. That was a huge success, because not only are players now able to solo their way up to the final raid boss of an expansion, but they now also can use practically all gear drops to equip their small army.
These small armies of avatars controlled by a single player are now called "guilds". The old sort of guilds, having several players in them, crumbled due to players not needing each other any more, and was abolished in the 2014 expansion. When crafting for NPC henchmen was introduced, the player-run economy wasn't necessary any more either. The auction house was removed from the game in 2016. With chat then only being used for exchanging insults, chat functionality was removed from WoW in 2018.
It is the year 2020 and World of Warcraft has 20 million players, all of them playing in splendid isolation from each other. Competitors games, which still try outmoded concepts like players interacting with each other don't stand a chance. Welcome to the future of MMORPGs, now simply called OGs, because there is neither massively multiplayer interaction, nor role playing.
The breakthrough came in 2012, with the 4th expansion, as Blizzard had realized a fundamental truth: Players simply do not want to play with others. Having always been good at "borrowing" ideas from other games, Blizzard took the henchman concept from Guild Wars, and enabled players to do dungeons and raids solo, accompanied only by NPC henchmen. That concept was expanded with time, and today players exclusively solo playing a raid group of 5 to 10 characters, being able to control one of them at will, while the AI does a great job at playing the other 4 to 9. That was a huge success, because not only are players now able to solo their way up to the final raid boss of an expansion, but they now also can use practically all gear drops to equip their small army.
These small armies of avatars controlled by a single player are now called "guilds". The old sort of guilds, having several players in them, crumbled due to players not needing each other any more, and was abolished in the 2014 expansion. When crafting for NPC henchmen was introduced, the player-run economy wasn't necessary any more either. The auction house was removed from the game in 2016. With chat then only being used for exchanging insults, chat functionality was removed from WoW in 2018.
It is the year 2020 and World of Warcraft has 20 million players, all of them playing in splendid isolation from each other. Competitors games, which still try outmoded concepts like players interacting with each other don't stand a chance. Welcome to the future of MMORPGs, now simply called OGs, because there is neither massively multiplayer interaction, nor role playing.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Creating a better community
In a recent thread about game communities Espoire asked how to create a better community for a game. This is an aspect of MMORPGs which appears to have been widely neglected, as many players feel that older games often had a better community than modern games.
Unfortunately part of the problem is that some factors that would help to improve the community have fallen out of favor with developers and players alike. One such factor is simply size: Small games tend to have a better community than large games. But as the number of players is also roughly proportional to revenue, game developers obviously prefer games with more players. One could artificially create smaller communities by cutting the game into small servers, but that would have the negative effect of longer waiting queues for battlegrounds and dungeons. You'd also have to suppress the ability to transfer between servers and change names to avoid that players escape social consequences by hiding or fleeing.
Similarily out of fashion are the tricks that the original Everquest used to foster a better community: Long downtimes between fights, and a harsh environment basically forcing the players to cooperate or perish. Forced grouping and 15-minute stretches of mana regeneration giving players the time to socialize are unlikely to reappear in a modern game.
So what can developers still do to foster a better community? One trick is currently applied in some cheap Asian grinder MMORPGs, and works reasonably well there: Giving veteran players rewards for mentoring new players. The first Asheron's Call had a similar system with lieges and vassals, which also resulted in veteran players having a vested interest in new players doing well in the game. A similar trick is having a system in place like City of Heroes / Villains, where players can temporarily adjust their levels to be able to play with others of higher or lower level. With rewards from dungeons being increasingly some sort of points instead of gear, that would actually be feasible now even in World of Warcraft. If you can give a player justice points for running a level 85 dungeon on normal, then why not give him points when he lowers his level to run an older dungeon on normal with some leveling friends?
Of course one could say that all these tricks of social engineering that make people be nicer to each other are somewhat creating a fake niceness. Veterans aren't really helping new players because they like them, but because it gives them an ingame benefit. But of course that is the best we can hope for as long as we demand that the improvements to the community come from the developers. We can't get to a really better community, where all the goodwill is felt from the bottom of the heart, without the players themselves contributing to that. I still remember my first day in Everquest, where a complete stranger helped me and even gave me a magic necklace, for no gain to himself. It is hard to blame developers for the fact that such behavior has become so rare.
Unfortunately part of the problem is that some factors that would help to improve the community have fallen out of favor with developers and players alike. One such factor is simply size: Small games tend to have a better community than large games. But as the number of players is also roughly proportional to revenue, game developers obviously prefer games with more players. One could artificially create smaller communities by cutting the game into small servers, but that would have the negative effect of longer waiting queues for battlegrounds and dungeons. You'd also have to suppress the ability to transfer between servers and change names to avoid that players escape social consequences by hiding or fleeing.
Similarily out of fashion are the tricks that the original Everquest used to foster a better community: Long downtimes between fights, and a harsh environment basically forcing the players to cooperate or perish. Forced grouping and 15-minute stretches of mana regeneration giving players the time to socialize are unlikely to reappear in a modern game.
So what can developers still do to foster a better community? One trick is currently applied in some cheap Asian grinder MMORPGs, and works reasonably well there: Giving veteran players rewards for mentoring new players. The first Asheron's Call had a similar system with lieges and vassals, which also resulted in veteran players having a vested interest in new players doing well in the game. A similar trick is having a system in place like City of Heroes / Villains, where players can temporarily adjust their levels to be able to play with others of higher or lower level. With rewards from dungeons being increasingly some sort of points instead of gear, that would actually be feasible now even in World of Warcraft. If you can give a player justice points for running a level 85 dungeon on normal, then why not give him points when he lowers his level to run an older dungeon on normal with some leveling friends?
Of course one could say that all these tricks of social engineering that make people be nicer to each other are somewhat creating a fake niceness. Veterans aren't really helping new players because they like them, but because it gives them an ingame benefit. But of course that is the best we can hope for as long as we demand that the improvements to the community come from the developers. We can't get to a really better community, where all the goodwill is felt from the bottom of the heart, without the players themselves contributing to that. I still remember my first day in Everquest, where a complete stranger helped me and even gave me a magic necklace, for no gain to himself. It is hard to blame developers for the fact that such behavior has become so rare.
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