Caswydian

It's more then that - MMOs can be expensive. Vanguard, as we all know, cost about $30 million, and WoW about $80 million. That money has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is going to want to see a return on their investment. Be it a parent company like Sony, Vivendi or Microsoft, or some VC, someone wants to turn a profit.

Next up, fans want quality. They want reliable servers and bug-free code. If we're talking about bringing in skilled managers and QA directors from outside the industry, you'll need to offer competitive salaries, and that costs money. For these guys, working in the game industry isn't necessarily a perk like it would be for some of us. People also want better and better graphics, more involved story lines and more complex game play, from combat to crafting. I really do not see the sort of dumbing down in MMOs as you might see in other media. While some people might argue that WoW is dumbing things down, really Blizzard learned to make a good game that focuses on doing a few tihngs very well.

Finally, we need to remember that MMOs will not make money for a while. Games take years to develop, and during that time, you're going to be spending money in huge amounts. Thus, there is lots of pressure to get a game out that will meet customer expectations that have been building over these years. All of it will come down to the launch and the first few weeks of a game's life. If the game has a good launch, chances are, it will be fairly successful. If it has a bad launch, it will be very tough to salvage. Vanguard is the perfect example - the game was sunk in it's first couple of months of life due to poor performance, buggy code and unrealistic customer expectations.

Vanguard was really an anti-game, in that reading the discussion forums leading up to launch and in the weeks following launch, the focus seemed excessively on what Vanguard was not - VG was not WoW or EQ2. There was little focus on what Vanguard was - it was hard to get a feel for what Vanguard actually offered as a game, and why one should play it, especially if one is already playing WoW or EQ2 or some other game.

Games, first and foremost need to be fun. If a game is fun, then people will likely be willing to overlook other flaws, since if those flows do not diminish their enjoyment, why dwell on them.

MMOs need to also offer some replay value to keep people playing and paying. This can take many forms, from time sinks like long camps to repetitive tasks like grinding to actually giving the player some degree of investment in the world. Right now, most MMOs seem to be focus on how to prevent players from leaving, but I think games really need to focus on designing games players want to come back to. What I mean by this is instead of creating systems where players feel trapped in the game, due to huge requirements to advance or variable ratio reward systems that encourage repetitive behavior like running an instance over and over, create a game where players feel welcome when they return, like a favorite restaurant or bar.

What I see is current games creating lots of resentment in their players, because the very design of games play on a number of well-known psychological techniques to make people want to continue playing. People feel the game is manipulating them into playing longer and longer, beyond what they really enjoy. Thus, when people finally do quit, they do so out of anger and frustration. Game developers need to accept and even encourage people to take breaks from the game, but at the same time present an enjoyable experience that players want to come back to time and again.

Flight

Score !!

Stoic

I miss pong, even though it had a ton of bugs at release.

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Valaraukar

fonzie's the man

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Flight

They've tried to stay below the radar so far, so its not surprising that folks don't know much about what they are doing. I do think folks are underestimating them though. Apart from the fact they are recruiting 'triple A' personnel across the board, amongst the little that we do know has been released by Curt Schilling :


i) everything that WoW did and achieved is a bare minimum for success (and he didn't mean financial, he meant about the state of the game at launch etc);

ii) they are creating a multi-BILLION dollar IP.


In my opinion, its the first Western MMO that deserves hype and which I'm absolutely sure will succeed. The company themselves, however, don't want to create any hype - certainly not yet. Compare and contrast Sigil, who were a prime example of how not to do pretty much every aspect of creating an IP.

Ski'tzu

What do you mean by 'competence'? What effect do you think better management would have had on Rise of Kunark specifically?



Your thesis about the importance of good management appeals to me, and I want to agree with it, so forgive me for attacking your facts so late...

According to the game's actual credits, Froech (Bruce Fergusen) wasn't the head producer of EQ2 at launch. That dubious distinction goes to someone named John Blakely, who has gone I-know-not-where, but isn't on EQ2 anymore. Froech worked under this guy.
Reference: EverQuest II Credits

Which managers on the original World of Warcraft were hired from outside the industry for that project? I searched through the credits and couldn't find anyone who wasn't credited on earlier Blizzard games. Or is this something that happened earlier than that?
Game Credits for World of Warcraft

Flight

It would be a boring and intellectually stunted world if we couldn't disagree with each other. And enjoy the debate.



To be fair to Bruce I did specifically say, in this thread, that we don't know how much of the original games development we can assign to him. I'm sure you will agree - it isn't important to assign blame. What is important is to learn from mistakes and not repeat them.

What we do know is that many core elements of EQ2 were without solid foundation or direction from the games earliest conception meetings. At various points of the games development, senior team members were replaced because of lack of cohesion. At one point a large number of the senior team were sacked / reassigned in one fell swoop and the head project manager replaced. This lack of cohesion, from the games earliest days, has continued throughout the ensuing expansions.


My questions with regard to Froech have been :

i) can he learn from the mistakes they made the first time around - can he really admit that to himself (not publicly and not just verbally) and learn from them ? I'm not talking about specific game mechanics - I'm talking about management skills and protecting and planning for the IP medium and long term.

ii) what have SoE done in the mean time in terms of personal development for Froech to equip him with the skills to get it right ?



An old Smed quote :

'I want us to be the Blizzard of the MMORPG world'

The opening line of the company description on the site you've lined to multiple times :

'Known more for their quality then quantity of titles'



Since its earliest days Blizzard have shown a commitment to quality and continuous learning - from way before its MMORPG days.

SoE on the other hand - same quality set up and same personnel responsible for quality since 2000. Everything from EQ1 expansions to SWG to Planetside to EQ2, pushing out up to 8 games / expansions a year !!!!! And every time the same feelings of being incomplete, with missing or unfinished content.


Incomplete EQ expansions, SWG - logging in not knowing if your house and crafting machines would be in the game or not, due to bugs. Close your Planetside account and still get charged. Hundreds of us haven't been able to log into our EQ2 accounts the last few days, even though they are fully paid and subscribed - their system has closed our accounts due to bugs. There are a hundred examples in between.


While I've commended Blizzard I don't believe they are the bastion of everything there is to achieve and learn in this area - far from it. Their standards should be a bare minimum for both game production and management processes.



The smaller picture is that the level 1-20 experience wouldn't make level 20-40 totally redundant, the game either wouldn't ship without epic quests or it wouldn't have had them promoted so heavily and it wouldn't have caused the AA debacle. Until shortly before release, the team were still saying AA's wouldn't be increased. I believe they were increased as an almost spur of the moment decision to appease customers unhappy about the missing epics.

If they were to be introduced, the existing AA trees should have been addressed, so they wouldn't be totally redundant for some classes. This would not have been a large amount of work - just remove the specific weapon requirements that a small number of classes had across their skill trees, such that having more than one skill tree was a valid choice.

As it was using the fires as a reason for not including epics in the shipped expansion was farcical.

Those are just scratching the surface and there are other obvious examples - the immediately obvious symptoms of the underlying challenges.

The larger picture is that there would be resilience, reliability and continuity in everything about the EQ2 IP and in the gameplay and fun aspect, from the first release of the game through its expansions. Achiever by better process management, better communication, better co-ordination, better documentation and better change management.

This isn't meant to crush SoE - I'm a huge fan of Smed and what he's done. He started it all and we owe him a debt of gratitude. Plus I have multiple SoE accounts even now. What it is meant to do is say it could all be done better.

People may disagree about individual parts of what I've (some minor points are up for debate) but that would be missing the whole picture. Its all based on a continuous drive to improve the way things are done and to learn, both from other people and from experience.

Flight

Hate the time limit on editting in this forum; had to go do something so can't fix spelling etc

In closing - most importantly, for players, games would ship as complete as possible (well beyond what is presently considered the 'norm'), on time and to spec. Most importantly, for the companies producing games, games would be delivered on time, to spec and within budget.

Illuminator

That is a complete leap. Do people enter this business with the intent to fail?

They've shown a commitment to dumbing down to excess, exemplified by the single-click Diablo/2 interface. Quality, but quality turd.

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Don't vote for Obama.

tomthumb

over 8m incl but not limited to willam shattner disagree