Commenting on the “polish” behind Blizzard games, SynCaine likens every Blizzard product as being a rehashed version of old IP. Says SynCaine on Blizzard’s next product:

…what happens when you apply the Blizzard business model to a Blizzard game and play it really, really safe? You get StarCraft 2, a highly polished port of SC1 that leaves you feeling bored and burned out halfway through your first game. When you can build a base and pull off a rush with your eyes closed using the same strategy and hotkeys you used in 1998, you’re game just MIGHT be a little too similar to its predecessor.

Starcraft was a good RTS. We never played competitively, but as someone who probably played every RTS up until Starcraft’s release (and likely sometime thereafter, too), Starcraft didn’t leave us with the impression that it was way ahead of the pack. The backstory wasn’t fantastic, the races were only marginally unique, and in truth, we can’t even say we loved Starcraft more than Blizzard’s previous RTS offerings.

So now we have Starcraft 2 on the horizon, with many bloggers already having posted early play impressions of the game. And really, we can’t help but think it’s just more of Starcraft. And that’s not to say this is a bad thing, because we’re all for sequels being “more of the same” if the formula was perfect. We just don’t think the Starcraft formula was perfect, and we’d much rather have seen something more epic for Starcraft 2. Maybe that puts us in the minority. Either way, we’re way more eager to see what comes out of the Diablo franchise, because between Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft, Diablo 3 doesn’t need to be revolutionary to be perfect – it just needs to take one small iterative step forward.Similar Posts:

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In a reply to SynCaine over at Hardcore Casual, commenter Mig borrows from Palahniuk’s Fight Club by acutely noting how World of Warcraft’s (WoW’s) glorified new looking-for-group (LFG) system does little more than create “single-serving friends.” The lack of difficulty in most instance encounters, combined with the ease of being able to quickly enter such content with strangers, means that in many ways, WoW’s guild system is deprecated. Whereas in the past, guilds served primarily as a way for like-minded gamers to approach content together, guilds are now left to serious raiders and socializing.

Interestingly, the gear creep isn’t even a staple of just end-game characters anymore. Old content is now routinely attempted by under-leveled characters who happen to have comparatively awesome gear. Combined with class changes like dual-specs, more crowd-control, and other evolutions that have occurred during WoW’s lifetime, there’s definitely little argument left for WoW being anything more than a casual game. A time-sink, still, but not a gaming pursuit appropriate for someone who wants a real, concerted challenge.

As we’ve said before, this is rather discouraging as a former player who looks back on the early days of WoW with adoration. Sure, there were class balance issues and other areas that needed fixing, but being able to form a group and reach the end of an instance was gratifying. Now, it’s just part of the perpetual grind. It’s a design evolution that has done Blizzard well financially, but one that has also alienated former players, who might have returned to the game if it offered anything more than a casual, Farmville-esque experience.Similar Posts:

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Lots of folk are annoyed at Bioware’s revelation of “companion characters” in the upcoming Star Wars MMORPG, whereby “companion characters” are NPC group-members that can stand-in when groups can’t find other players to fill certain roles, such as healers and tanks. Keen was one of the first to vocalize his aggression:

Why don’t you just make it a single player game? I do not understand this mentality of making a MMO and then taking all these steps and putting in all these systems to make it anything but a multiplayer experience. What is the point? Make it another Bioware RPG and stop jerking us around by jumping onto the “We’re a MMO!” bandwagon.

Looks like Keen, like many others, doesn’t get that not every MMOG player wants to group and raid, which has become a common sentiment among MMOG bloggers, lately. Whereas before World of Warcraft (WoW), lots of people wanted a more solo-able experience, the exact opposite is true now among “real” gamers. But these folks need to realize that MMOGs are going to cater to both camps, whether everyone likes it or not. The fact is, MMOGs are a pretty cheap form of entertainment compared to blowing through multiple 20-hour single-player games every month, so for “hardcore” gamers who want single-player experiences, the MMOG is a valid outlet. This is particularly true when one considers factors that support the single-player experience yet is based on the player populace at large, such as player-made goods, auction houses, et al.

If anything, NPC party members will be a good thing because it will somewhat allow more casual gamers to participate in group contact that they might otherwise be shut out of. No more stalling public groups because the baby is crying, or because mom and dad called your tank to the dinner table. The more pertinent issue at hand is the effectiveness of NPC party members, and this is where careful play balancing needs to take place. In other words, assuming that NPC party members could be written to be as intelligent as players as far as respective group roles are concerned, they shouldn’t. A good player tank should always be better than an NPC tank, whereas the NPC tank should probably be better than a poor tank. This will force poor players to up their game or get out, and as long as certain encounters are written to require good players, then mostly NPC parties won’t be able to succeed in top-rate instances anyway, so the “hardcore” can still have their cake.

Another bonus to this is that even at low levels, Bioware can require players to participate in groups. This way, from the get-go, players will learn how to play their class in a group environment, rather than having to learn end-game mechanics such as threat, aggro, healing, et al upon reaching end-game. It’s a good idea that more MMOG developers should explore, rather than shy away from because of a thousand angry Keens.Similar Posts:

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There’s a special place in Hell for those who destroy good lore. Sure, some lore tweaks are necessary now again just to keep a back-story consistent, and fluff moving in the right direction. Yet some designers, like George Lucas, take things too far when they butcher Star Wars by introducing midichlorians and other such nonsense. Yet we forgive even some grievances, like when Blizzard decided to arbitrarily split races in the World of Warcraft along rigid lines of Alliance versus Horde. Sure, they put the usually-peaceful Tauren up against the similarly nature-loving Night Elves, but made up for it by making a druidic stronghold where both races got along peacefully. But then Blizzard did very little with actual factional warfare, so like many other things WoW, the whole idea went to shit fairly quickly.

Let’s be honest: Blizzard ignoring good lore has become ever more frequent over time, to the point where we seriously wonder whether Azeroth will just be one big hodge-podge of confused races and classes, where no one is truly unique anymore because being different is bad, even if it’s only bad because the game’s developers can’t figure out a good way to balance things effectively. Look what happened to the only two classes unique to the respective factions upon WoW’s release: by the time WoW’s first expansion came along, Paladins were offered to the Horde, and Shamans to the Alliance. One of these we could have argued as reasonable, but bringing a holy order to the typically shamanistic Horde?

There’s clearly a lack of communication between those who developed WoW’s fluff, and who’s making the game’s design decisions today. Maybe that’s because many of WoW’s original developers are no longer with Blizzard, or maybe it’s because the company has just “sold out”. But clearly, there’s a discrepancy between what’s sensical in-character, and what changes have been made merely to keep millions of subscribers hooked to a grindy enterprise, particularly when any semblance of perpetuity of a character is thrown asunder when paid character modifications result in race, faction, and aesthetic changes. Simply put, a character rolled in 2004 may look totally different today, with the only consistent factor being class, and the role of that class may have changed over the years as well.

So what’s bugging us this time around? Well, with the Cataclysm expansion announced, Blizzard is adding two new races to WoW: Goblins for Horde, and Worgen for Alliance. We’ll even disregard any objections to these inclusions by the truly hardcore lore zealots, but instead move directly on to class/race combinations. When we began writing this, we thought we’d do a run-down of every class and prod at the allowable races upon Cataclysm’s launch, but that exercise quickly became too painful to finish. But we’ll still mention some highlights, just to illustrate the sheer stupidity of it all.

• Everyone can be a Death Knight. Nice, dumb precedent, Blizzie.
• The Undead now commune with the animal kingdom. Undead druids next?
• Holy Cows. LOL.

On the one hand, we can now create guilds based almost entirely on one race, though arguably that was doable before. So that leaves us with the other hand, which points at the same old sad story of Blizzard watering down WoW in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Five years ago, not only was WoW a well-polished DIKU, but it was a well-polished DIKU with unique toons, limited by their choice of race, class, and spec, not to mention slight aesthetic tweaks. Today, everyone of a given class is practically the same, with some racials no longer being unique (ala the Priest racials), and players able to settle on easy race decisions because there are too many race options for most classes. Compounded with the fact that existing players can funnel funds from WoW’s broken economy to new toons for an enormous advantage over new or returning players, and the stage is set for the casual WoW player (“the grinder”) to have too much say in WoW’s continued development. Never mind that dual-specs further water-down the character building process.

It’s sad, really, because while Cataclysm is a snazzy attraction to everyone who’s played WoW before thanks to the focus on “evolving” old lands, WoW as a whole is still on the slippery slope to trashville. It’s like the X-Files of the video game world, with a strong start, a great following, and an ultimate decline into obscurity.Similar Posts:

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Looking back at the decades of games we’ve played, a handful jump out not only as among our favorites, but as enormous time and money sinks. It’s not that the dollars and time spent were wasted, because we certainly enjoyed them all, but it makes for an interesting retrospective when we consider the lengths we went to in order to maintain our addiction. The top-five titles we can recall, in order of release, follow.

The Wing Commander series: Okay, so maybe it’s not fair to give the title to a series, but our time spent playing the Wing Commander games is one big blur of space combat. The experience bled right into our time spent playing the Freespace games, as well as X-Wing and TIE Fighter, making for a slightly hazy recollection, but one certainly based on the Wing Commander franchise of old. Arguably, our love for flight simulators was born with Dynamic’s Red Baron, and quickly grew to higher destinations. While Wing Commander I and II didn’t necessarily steal our hearts right away, Wing Commander: Privateer destroyed any hope we may have had for returning to earth, introducing us not only to sandbox-style gameplay (unmatched to this day in space sims outside EVE Online), but also solidifying the love we had for the Kilrathi. When Wing Commander III stepped up to the plate with live-action cut-scenes and Mark-fucking-Hamill (we were huge Star Wars fans back then), the franchise proved even more groundbreaking than Sierra’s Phantasmagoria (also a solid title). Indeed, Wing Commander III became such a must-have for us, that we spent over $200 on new RAM just to get it to run. (The game needed at least 8MB of RAM for its future-like space graphics.) That’s dedication.

That’s not all, though – we easily spent another $200 on flight sticks, from the Flight Stick Pro, to the Phoenix, to our final multi-part Saitek model. Maybe it was more like $300.

Quake: While we were already firmly hooked on first-person shooters (FPS), Quake took our obsession to the next level. Ironic, then, that when we first picked up Quake at a computer convention, we played through it and thought little of it, wishing that the game captured a hint of the fun we faced when playing Doom 2 with a friend. But then we went to college where we discovered the joys of real broadband, and finally saw the amazing graphics that 3Dfx video accelerator cards produced, breathing new life into old games. Another ~$200 purchase later, with new accelerator card installed, Quake took on its new life with Quakeworld, and dorm-room fragging became our new past-time, eating up our time in just as bad a way as booze and late-night college parties.

Diablo 2: Again, not our introduction to a genre, but our continued obsession with it. In this case, Diablo 2 prevailed over our experience with Diablo and Darkstone, and may even have fallen into similar obscurity if it hadn’t been for the rather strange siren’s call it would produce every six to 12 months. Indeed, after playing Diablo 2 to death once, or even twice, it somehow kept wrangling us back as though we were some abused house-wife who just couldn’t will herself to get away. So it was with Diablo 2, playing first with single-player characters, then on Battle.Net a few times, and ultimately with hardcore characters who would inevitably die thanks to a bad-timed lag spike. Ultimately, this technical obstacle is what drove us away from the game, but more than once we’ve been called back to re-install the monster that influenced World of Warcraft. Indeed, if there wasn’t a problem installing Diablo 2 on the latest versions of OS X, we may be running a copy right now.

Counterstrike: What Quake was to our first year of university, Counterstrike was to every year after its release. While Half-Life didn’t really do much for us, Counterstrike took our soul and replaced it with a frag-crazed maniac. It’s the only title we can claim to have played on an internationally competitive level (we’re talking tournaments here, not just skills), and we followed the game’s development from its early betas to what we consider to have been its decline circa 2.0. By the time Source came along, we were already out of the mix, but before that, a desire to min-max our performance resulted in $100 mouse purchases (Razer Boomslang FTW!) and countless hardware upgrades. Granted, those upgrades may have been for other games as well, but it was Counterstrike that remained the prevailing force. Funny that, since this is the only free game on this list (purchase of Half-Life not withstanding). It’s also the only non-commercial game on this list, even though some enterprising folks decided to release a boxed version later.

World of Warcraft (WoW): Not only the most recent game obsession of ours, but also the one with our strongest memories of angst, aimed squarely at Blizzard for making some outright dumb decisions on the game’s evolution. But hey, they gave us Diablo 2, and much like that demonic enterprise, WoW sucked us in twice after we gave it up, so perhaps the fruit doesn’t fall that far from the tree. At the very least, it’s a solid testament to Blizzard polish that the company produced two of the games on this list. So addicted were we to WoW that we mostly ignored everything else out there, and for WoW to run adequately, we purchased at least one video card for our aging PC before dumping the system entirely in favor of pure-Apple goodness. Of course, to make this transition, we had to upgrade our PowerBook, so we effectively purchased a machine for over $2k just to have an Apple notebook capable of running the game. This, on top of miscellaneous buys like second-hand copies of the Collector’s Editions, a strategy guide, and a book of maps. These purchases combined clearly dwarf the money we spent on previous games, and that’s all on top of the huge amount of time we put into the game in order to reach, and continue playing, the endgame.

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Casual versus hardcore gaming is a relatively new discussion among gamers, ousting such classic favorites as “Which platform is better?” That’s because as games grow in complexity, and as game libraries continue to expand, the options available to gamers climb accordingly. As humans, we’re inextricably drawn to differentiating ourselves from one another, and what better way to do this than by categorizing the opposition? At Kill Ten Rats, Ravious points out that Turbin’s Vastin has a refreshing take on the issue, especially when coming from an MMOG developer:

When I’m making a piece of content, I’m generally thinking of more specifc [sic], objective concepts like ‘group’, ‘soloist’, ‘combat-heavy’, ‘roleplaying/story’, ‘challenging’, ‘easy’, ‘grindy’, ‘short’, ‘long’, etc, and mixing those tags up in various combinations. NONE of those tags package and apply readily to as broad (and ultimately meaningless) a category as hardcore or casual. I’ve seen ‘soloists’ who are absurdly ‘hardcore’ by any reasonable interpretation of the word, and decidedly casual players who only ever play with their kins. The distinction is useless for determining what KIND of content a player likes.

With this thought, Vastin has summed up a key gripe we’ve had with the general assertion that players who want to solo are inherently on the “casual” spectrum, whereas those who want to group are naturally “hardcore” players. We have examples to illustrate exactly this misunderstanding, such as with our one friend who cared little for gear or learning the intricacies of class specs in World of Warcraft (WoW), but generally enjoyed grouping instead of grinding through solo content. Similarly, when our WoW-time was limited, we tended to solo more out of convenience, even though we remained steadfast theorycrafters and tried to tighten up our gameplay as soundly as any end-game raider would. To expand on Vastin’s point, the issue isn’t merely a preference for content type, but also in what content is available to the player because of real-life concerns, such as time constraints.

The only place where I find a very broad approach useful is in convenience of play. What is a player’s overall tolerance for inconvenience and delay of any sort? … A hardcore player will put up with [a] less refined UI, buggier content, long travel times, and other things that basically delay or degrade the play experience. A casual player will quit after fairly little irritation of that sort.

With this in mind, is it fair to define a “casual” player as one who seeks to maximize their limited gaming time with meaningful action? This would suggest it’s “hardcore” players who are okay with grinding mobs and repetitive content to get ahead, whereas casuals are unwilling to invest their time in such endeavors because the rewards are trivial compared to the investment required. Maybe that’s why so many WoW players burn out after reaching the level cap and running a couple end-game dungeons; the diminishing returns on gear and character progression do not warrant the continued time investment at end-game, because the incremental skill advancement pales in comparison to the character’s skill evolution earlier in the game. Effectively, we said something similar last August:

Let’s get one thing straight from the get-go: a casual game is one that can be jumped into, enjoyed, and ultimately turned off approximately 30 minutes later. After those 30 minutes, the player should still feel a sense of progress. A “hardcore” game, on the other hand, has nothing to do with the game’s complexity, graphics, story, control scheme, etc. Rather, a hardcore title is one that cannot be picked up by a player for merely 30 minutes, if the player expects to make a fair degree of progress.

In other words, what makes non-raiders casual in the common MMOG verbiage is that these players see little value for their time by attempting to raid. They would rather do dailies to collect tokens than attempt to form a raid group, because the perceived benefit of earning a guaranteed token is far better than “hoping” for the raid’s success in earning a sought-after drop. It doesn’t matter if we’re looking at 30 minutes, an hour, or five hours; “casual” gamers are more likely to seek out the quick and likely gain by taking less risks, whereas their “hardcore” counterparts are less bothered by raid wipes because they place less real-world value on their gaming time (or rather, prioritize it differently). But remember that this definition is limited to convenience of play, as Vastin proposes, not in intended playstyle. And that’s the problem with the generic casual/hardcore labels: when used, do most people refer to time-limited players, the seriousness a player places in their character and in-game accomplishments, or a player’s tendency for one type of content over another? Depending on the accuser, the definition varies, though we stand behind Vastin in his interpretation.

In the end, the community ought to throw these terms out the window entirely, else be very specific about what they mean when describing a player. Only then is the accusation of any merit, because it’s in understanding why two given players may be incompatible that we can build games that successfully cater to both without diminishing the entertainment of either.

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We pretty much agree with Wolfshead’s suggestion that the next World of Warcraft (WoW) hero class will likely be a melee-oriented healer ala a monk, or, as Wolfshead proposed, the Runemaster:

I expect Blizzard to slightly morph the monk into one of their own creations and use one of the existing classes from their Warcraft RPG or RTS games. The Runemaster is the natural candidate as he incorporates magical runes which should give the archetypal placid monk a injection of pizazz. Martial arts classes are fun to play and quite popular in today’s video game culture.

While the Paladin class is already based on the monk mold, it differs in its pleasant take on tanking, compared to what we would envision as more of a “Rogue with healing” class. Quite simply, a Runemaster character could employ mechanics perhaps based on the Death Knight rune system, and differ from the Paladin by being too weak to handle damage that tanks are meant to soak. The trick will be in keeping a Runemaster’s DPS high without taking over Rogue roles. This could chiefly be addressed by letting a Runemaster’s DPS power their healing abilities, much like healing classes in Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR) work. Indeed, the Runemaster could serve as a great short-range AoE healer that would help maintain health for those around him, instead of focusing on direct healing like Paladins, Priests, and Druids. And, instead of working to buff group-mates like the Paladin does, the Runemaster would instead serve a greater crowd-control function, perhaps through the use of debuffs.

Interestingly, what we’re seeing in the Death Knight, and what we may very well see in future hero classes, is less “new” classes, but rather better designed classes evolved from WoW’s traditional cast. For example, we can easily see the Death Knight reworked slightly (mostly in atmosphere) such that he could entirely replace the Warrior class, and with something like the Runemaster a viable class alternative, we really don’t need a Rogue class if the Runemaster were built equally flexible. Of course, that’s the type of evolution we’d expect from a seven-year-old game.

Regardless, there’s no denying that hero classes will continue on as WoW ages, if for no other reason than they add additional replayability to an aging game. While newer players may feel that catching up to WoW veterans is nigh impossible, that’s hardly the case if they jump on the WoW bandwagon around the time a new expansion comes out.

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Scott Jennings makes a great point about why Darkfall won’t make it in the end:

…people enjoy hardcore PvP in the abstract. Or, to put another way, many more people believe they are ‘hardc0re’ then actually are. And they dislike being proved wrong pretty powerfully… The Mordred problem is simply that a great majority of the people who believe they are hardcore are not, and after being violently disabused of the notion, will leave.

Many people want PvP, and we’ve even stated in the past how it’s the PvP element that can make many MMOGs not get stale when characters reach the end-game. However, the industry still hasn’t gotten it perfectly right. World of Warcraft (WoW) ignores PvP for the most part, relegating it to a novelty or distraction from the “true” end-game: raiding. Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (WAR) makes PvE just another way to get to the PvP end-game, but in WAR’s implementation, PvP can quickly get old, in that the end-game is effectively and truly the end of the game as far as new experiences are concerned.

Only EVE arguably has PvP done right, as it strikes a fair balance between true, impact PvP (“the hardcore”) and a casual advancement game. Still, if Ultima Online (UO) managed to achieve success in its day, can we realistically argue that its success was based purely on the fact that there weren’t any other graphical MMOGs to attract gamers? Or was there actually something other than time investment that kept players of UO from immediately jumping ship to Meridian 59 or Everquest? More than likely, there’s a powerful, but niche market for real impact PvP, so even if Darkfall’s numbers drop significantly after a few months, it’s likely that subscriptions will level out and slowly begin to climb again.

Certainly, a game like Darkfall won’t become a viable threat to WoW’s market share, but we don’t think anyone’s claiming otherwise. Some gamers, particularly legacy MMOG players who were introduced to the genre with UO, will adore games like Darkfall. The important take-away, though, is whether there are enough “hardcore” gamers to make Darkfall’s development pay off monetarily, and that’s not something we’ll know for another year or so.

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Our take on EVE Online has fluctuated worse than a woman’s pregnancy mood. Let us summarize:

When we were first exposed to EVE through a friend, we didn’t think much of it. Giving it some more thought, however, we loved the idea of a graphical Trade Wars MMO. EVE even brought back memories of what we hoped Starshield could turn into (sans the quantum weather bit), and by the time our fascination with World of Warcraft (WoW) was coming into steep decline, EVE jumped back on our radar as the game to play. Then we actually played EVE, and after our trial period ended, we left EVE behind with great regret that the interface was clumsy, and that the game’s complexity brought about a learning curve simply too steep for us to want to climb.

Somehow, literally years later, EVE came back on our radar thanks in part to the hijinks of GoonSwarm. The recent incident we speak of, talked about in blogs aplenty, faithfully describes the scenarios prevalent in EVE’s online world. The incident in question can be found described much better elsewhere, but in short, the GoonSwarm alliance used key social engineering to topple a rival alliance, effectively altering the very political topography of a rather massive area of space.

This is where EVE differs from other MMOGs: corporations (guilds) actually matter, and alliances between corporations are even more meaningful. Since EVE includes a very significant portion of space that is PvP-friendly, the capability to hold areas of that space is as game-defining as land-grabs are defining in the real world. This is why mankind has fought over land for millenia: wealth.

Imagine if WoW guilds were able to control zones, preventing other players from entering without a healthy battle. Now imagine if the most powerful guilds managed to control certain zones exclusively, to the point where they’ve held onto them for years. To bring things even further into perspective, imagine if the control of these zones allowed this guild to monopolize a raid dungeon and get awesome gear from it for years. Now imagine that a rival guild, using connivery, managed to disassemble the guild from within. Sure, WoW has routine guild drama with guild leaders pulling a fast /gquit, but we’re talking about something far more earth-shattering. When this made-up guild finally dissolves, imagine that all its assets, from the guild bank and elsewhere, is now up-for-grabs by outsiders, if not destroyed outright. It’s almost like losing years worth of epic gear overnight.

EVE further differentiates itself from other MMOGs in its no-holds-barred attitude towards player interactions. In EVE, swindling, guile, and espionage are all valid tactics, whereas these subjects are matters of contention, or even reasons for banning, in other MMOGs. It’s because of these gameplay aspects, in addition to EVE’s sandbox-style gameplay, that has made EVE an ever-growing title with a new retail box hitting store shelves next month (the game was almost exclusively sold online since its release years ago). Alongside the retail box release comes a “new player experience”, which is aimed at scaling down the learning curve for new players by giving them more tutorials and not throwing them from the nest the moment a character is created. And, all this comes alongside EVE’s latest expansion (there are two per year, and are free to subscribers).

While some of our friends are returning to WoW after a hiatus, we instead gave EVE a second look, and figured that the new player experience could be the deciding factor in bringing us back to an MMOG. Why EVE? Aside from our love of piracy, espionage, and an economics system that makes transactions in other MMOGs look like something from a 1980s-style MUD, EVE also happens to offer casual gameplay despite its PvP leanings. On top of that, EVE isn’t “twitch”-based like other PvP titles, offering a formula for success that no other MMOG has yet offered. And, it has OS X and Linux clients, which makes those of who have abandoned the Windows platform quite happy.

When all is said and done, EVE is still a grizzly of a game whose complexity makes us a bit scared, since we’re theorycrafters at heart. How to juggle the game’s complexity with a desire to stay casually vested in a game that includes veterans with years of experience among its player-base? Well, we haven’t entirely figured that out yet, but that’s why we’re making an effort at cataloguing our trek back into EVE Online. We won’t say that we’ll definitely stick with EVE this time around (heck, we even almost quite just three days after subscribing), but we’re determined to give the game a go until after we’ve explored the new player experience. And, in the meantime, we’ll have a chance to train some of the game’s skills, which can only help us down the road, right? So, stay tuned to our future EVE musings.

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One of the primary reasons that World of Warcraft (WoW) managed to make MMOGs mainstream is because of timing. That’s not to say that WoW isn’t a good game in its own right, but chances are, if the stars weren’t in perfect alignment, WoW wouldn’t have amazed observers with its vacuum-like prowess at sucking in millions of gamers. Hardcore Casual’s syncaine wrote a great synopsis of these events:

In short, late 2004 was a ‘perfect storm’ of sorts to launch an MMO. The current king shot himself in the foot, removing himself right before your arrival. The previous king told his core audience to screw, and gaming itself was moving out of its nerd niche and into the mainstream thanks to Sony and the Playstation brand. Oh yea, and WoW was a great game.

Among the contributing factors to WoW’s success was the rather poor timing of Blizzard’s competitors, such as Sony’s arguably premature release of Everquest 2, and Mythic’s change of focus with Dark Age of Camelot’s Trials of Atlantis expansion. These, and other factors, allowed Blizzard to release WoW in a state in which gamers were willing to put up with significant blunders:

It’s nice to think WoW had this perfect launch, and by 2004 standards it sure seemed like it. If fact, it was so perfect, Blizzard handed out weeks worth of free account time to players due to servers being down for 8+ hours at a time, and server queues of an hour+. If you happen to pick one of the ‘troubled’ servers in the early days, it was not uncommon 3-5 MONTHS after release for that server to still be down for extended maintenance.

This was on top of some major balancing issues, back when WoW’s PvP game was an afterthought at best. Most WoW players today can’t even recall when Druids were unbelievably slow to level thanks to unbearably low DPS, and when Shamans were king of the roost for virtually all PvP engagements, though serving little purpose in end-game group environments. With hindsight, one can see the rather drastic changes Blizzard made with WoW’s classes, and how the poor state of the game would be ridiculed were it reflected in any new MMOG release. In other words, if a publisher released an MMOG today with the same release deficiencies WoW had in its day, no matter how polished or innovative compared to WoW, it still wouldn’t pose a significant threat to WoW because the market simply isn’t as tumultuous as it was in 2004.

How then, to capture an audience larger than Warhammer’s 300k? Simply, by filling a niche made up of “real” MMOG players and letting them pimp the game. In other words, targeting WoW directly by attempting to lure its players en masse will be impossible, as the majority of WoW gamers are casual “lemmings” (to use syncaine’s term), who are only playing WoW because that’s where they were influenced to go in the first place. It’s the early adopters of WoW, who were already versed in MMOGs, who will ultimately decide where the industry goes next. Some of these early adopters are the “tourists” eagerly trying out whichever MMOG flavor-of-the-month is available, while some are the “jaded” gamers currently filling Mythic’s pockets by subscribing to Warhammer.

So yes, 300k is the number MMOG publishers need to initially shoot for, with an understanding in place that a new MMOG’s infrastructure needs to be scalable reasonably quickly, and that the core mechanics need to be adaptable to a casual gamer’s play-style down the road. Perhaps Blizzard was right, then, to initially focus on end-game raiding versus casual play, because that’s what sucked in the MMOG faithful. By the time WoW had firmly enraptured the masses, hints of casual gameplay began to materialize, to the point where Wrath of the Lich King is regularly referred to as a casual expansion.

The fortunate variable for future MMOG publishers is that Blizzard’s business strategy in regards to future expansions is simply not sustainable. One can’t simply keep raising the level cap and adding new PvE content, because even if it captures the attention of past subscribers, it’s doubtful that the same people will re-subscribe over and over again. Realistically, these expansions will simply keep the majority of subscribers busy enough until Blizzard releases their next MMOG, with the major risk being taken that the right competitor will release mid-way between WoW expansions. That kind of timing is what Blizzard needs to be afraid of, because it will be at a point where leeriness of WoW will be at a peak, and when capturing 300k subscribers will be much easier than when a new MMOG title is in direct competition with a new WoW expansion, however mediocre this expansion is.

Ultimately, the luck involved in succeeding at MMOG publishing can be influenced to some extent. Observing the market conditions, and predicting the state of one’s competitor’s games at the end of one’s own release cycle, is key. After all, 300k subscribers won’t pay one’s bills until a handful of years have passed, which means that while 300k is a population to shoot for, it needs to be a goal that will springboard the population to greater levels for true profit to be realized.

Fortunately, for a lucky few, that profit isn’t a pipe dream.

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