What Ever Happened to Live Events? - General Columns

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What Ever Happened to Live Events? - General Columns

The MMO genre has huge potential to make use of live events. Orchestrated by developers for players to enjoy - even if for a limited time - they offer seemingly spontaneous content (despite requiring months of planning) that’s both original and unexpected. Live events also offer respite from the predictable roadmap we’re often fed.

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FelixMajor

Only game I remember experiencing live events in was Regnum. The GMs online would play an active dungeon master and spawn random bosses/waves of attacking enemies near villages and outposts.

That was fun times!

I would love to see more of this in games.

Ikeda

Is this an Amazon ad? Just curious. Needs more fleshed out content proof of active live events.

Octagon7711

Mostly a lot of the large guilds hosts live events now a days. In GW2 a guild can even trigger a world boss fight.

PersistentWorld

Ikeda said:

Is this an Amazon ad? Just curious. Needs more fleshed out content proof of active live events.

Absolutely not, but if you want to pay me ad money do email me

PersistentWorld

Octagon7711 said:

Mostly a lot of the large guilds hosts live events now a days. In GW2 a guild can even trigger a world boss fight.

It's not quite the same though, is it? It's still a repetitive, scripted event that never changes. A live event is often entirely unique.

Burntvet

The same thing happened to live events that happened to MMOs in general: since MMOs turned into single player games in shared space, instead of group based, non-soloable games they were at the beginning, MMO companies stopped doing "live events" because players would need to interact with others to do/enjoy the content.

Which is something specifically those same companies have been moving away from for years.

Oh, and it also takes some degree of creativity to do live events well, something else those same MMO companies have mostly lost over the years.

Octagon7711

PersistentWorld said:

Octagon7711 said:

Mostly a lot of the large guilds hosts live events now a days. In GW2 a guild can even trigger a world boss fight.

It's not quite the same though, is it? It's still a repetitive, scripted event that never changes. A live event is often entirely unique.

It's in addition to the other events they often plan.

Nightbringe1

Burntvet said:

The same thing happened to live events that happened to MMOs in general: since MMOs turned into single player games in shared space, instead of group based, non-soloable games they were at the beginning, MMO companies stopped doing "live events" because players would need to interact with others to do/enjoy the content.

Which is something specifically those same companies have been moving away from for years.

Oh, and it also takes some degree of creativity to do live events well, something else those same MMO companies have mostly lost over the years.

It also requires a live human to act as GM/moderator. Not likely in today's games.

kishe

Ultima Online had amazing live events ran by voluenteers untill 1-2 of the voluenteers (may they forever be cursed with incontinense) hired bunch of ambulance chasers and sued EA for ea having them work for free. That ended uo having 24/7 mini live events and amazing bigger ones.

Archlyte

This is because the people making the games have left their Game Master days far behind them, or are too young to have experienced Pen & Paper. Today's developer is simply too constrained by accounting, and has no sense of putting a game world out there for players to explore. They don't build worlds in the rest of the year so why would they add life to the world during the holidays?

If you advocate for details in the world then on any forum of any game what you will instantly get is someone bitching about how dollars need to go toward bug fixes, or balancing PvP. Things that make the world dynamic or detailed are instantly shouted down by the status quo crusaders.

finkele

Dunno if anyone remembers the early days of Horizons. It use to have events that lasted for days, whole server had to work together. Also these events unlocked new classes, zones, etc. Wish MMO's would have evolved more to things like that.

Sovrath

I think it's about money and "downsizing" their gm team.

I recall in Lineage 2 where we had several gm's and then suddenly they implemented a system where "a few" gm's could handle several servers. Clearly they were getting rid of people and trying to maximize what the gm's did.

It's a shame as live events could really spice up game play.

Thomas2006

It all comes down to how large the games population is. WoW as an example you would need 100+ people in order to pull of a very basic live event. Cause anytime you goto do an event on one server and not on the others also. Players throw a big tissy fit about it. That is ultimately what ruined live events is that people complained to much. The event didnt happen during my free time, it was on a different server, ect ect.

People just moan about everything and we ruined live events. Its not a lack of developer interest or want to do these. But more the fact that no matter what happens people are just going to complain for X reason. So at that point why as a developer of a game do live events if its just going to end up making some of your players mad over it.

Alomar

I've always wanted and asked for more in terms of events in mmo's. Yet, I've had very little to no experience with them. I remember when Lotro launched the EU publisher would constantly have live events that we never got on the NA servers, and it was always disappointing. Immersion has become an ever fading feature in mmo's, which all events (especially live) play a crucial role in creating/maintaining.

Leiros

My all time favorite live event was in Pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies. One day a GM accidentally spawned an AT-AT walker on Naboo (there were no AT-ATs in the game at that time). Within minutes hundreds of imperials and rebels flocked to the area. I remember guild chat blowing up and everyone freaking out at the starport. That GM single handedly started one of the most memorable and enjoyable events in SWG history. Ah, good times.

waynejr2

Thomas2006 said:

It all comes down to how large the games population is. WoW as an example you would need 100+ people in order to pull of a very basic live event. Cause anytime you goto do an event on one server and not on the others also. Players throw a big tissy fit about it. That is ultimately what ruined live events is that people complained to much. The event didnt happen during my free time, it was on a different server, ect ect.



People just moan about everything and we ruined live events. Its not a lack of developer interest or want to do these. But more the fact that no matter what happens people are just going to complain for X reason. So at that point why as a developer of a game do live events if its just going to end up making some of your players mad over it.

I agree with you. The zombie plague for the release of WOTLK was a source of major complaint. Funny stuff. The devs "learned" from that.

Also you have the 15 minutes at a time people who claim to only play for short minutes at a time because they have to take care of the kids/animals or smoking habit. They miss the events and complain because they take too much time or they complain about their limited time getting interrupted by the events.

Then you have the off-prime time players. Perhaps it is an Oz player playing on a west coast server. Are the events going to run 24 hours so those players get a chance to play? How many GMs would you need to cover that?

Let's not forget the collusion that can happen when a GM favors his buddies during events. Perhaps allowing for some kind of exploitation. Although I suspect some of the past claims of this happening are exaggerated.

Dynamic events offer a better solution to the problem. From City of Heroes Rikti Invasions to GW2 scripted Dynamic Events, you have a lot of potential in these and players clearly enjoyed these events. These dynamic events haven't been fully experimented with.

As to the corrupted blood incident. I don't think it is fair to called it a dynamic event as it was a side effect of a bug. It certainly was something though and what happened was amazing. Let's just call it an incident... Unless your goal is asking devs to add more bugs to their code?!

Moirae

Why would they bother? It costs money for that. And they are now convinced that the players are stupid and will accept garbage if it has different graphic because we are allowing it.

Greeka

One of the biggest problems with live events being done effectively and with a sense of flair that gets players talking is the lag that it generally creates within the game itself. Many mmo's have lag in some semblance and when a live event gets up and going in a specific area/location within the game that area almost comes to a grinding halt as if a ddos attack had just occurred in the came world. When I hear about a live event I do get a little excited but generally avoid them now because of the crippling lag that is generally seen when participating in these events. They are great, but at the same time doing so in a spontaneous should have some fore thought as to how it can be accessible to all who want to partake in the event and not get crushed the the troll knows as LAG.

DztBlk

I remember something like that in CoX.  Was really fun!  You regularly to play alongside and chat with GMs.

avalon1000

Firefall had some great live events before the "fall". Such wasted potential.

TheDarkrayne

The author of this clearly has no idea what a live event is. Every example given isn't one.

Vesavius

I am a member of the EQ/GQ2 GM events community... They still happen. You guys just choose to ignore them.

arbacus

holiday events are best if they are live events run by GMs scripted holiday content is dangerous and can be immersion breaking for many players or it can make players feel like they are missing out on content that is temporarye etc. I really like live events a lot better than the scripted stuff because iw ould reather companies pay for GMs than divert development resources to big scripted holiday content

Hariken

avalon1000 said:

Firefall had some great live events before the "fall". Such wasted potential.

I was going to say this.

Quizzical

You don't seem to realize what you've just done in that article, so I'll spell it out for you.  You start by praising live events, and then you marshal an impressive array of catastrophic blunders that any worthwhile development team will try very hard to never repeat.  Why not add duping bugs, server instability, and database corruption to the list while you're at it?  Those get people talking, too, and in about the same sense of rubbernecking at a car wreck as your examples.

Let's start with the WoW corrupted blood example.  Come play our game and get instant-killed by griefers and there's nothing you can do about it.  Except quit the game.  You can do that.  Maybe it's funny if you're one of the griefers, but not if you're getting instant killed in safe areas with no recourse while just trying to play the game.

Then comes the unique event loot from Neocron.  Come play our game where you'll get destroyed in PVP and never be able to catch up because you missed the event.  Real good advertising right there.  Maybe it's fun to get huge advantages over others.  People buy cheat programs for about the same reasons and with about the same effects on the game.  Just because it's sanctioned by the developers doesn't make the effects any less corrosive on the playerbase.

And then there is Guild Wars 2's Living World.  Perhaps not the disaster of your other examples, but it is a way to spend a ton of resources on development only to have exactly the same amount of content a year later as you did before.  Maybe you can get away with that on an enormous budget, but most MMORPGs have a very hard time getting enough content, and spending half of your content resources on things that people who pick up the game later never get to play means you just cut your content in half.

Real-life time of day dependence is one of the worst flaws that an online game can have.  Most people can't devote their life to the game, and if they have to in order to catch the events necessary to keep up, that can quickly turn into most people can't play the game at all.  So you get the worst drawbacks of a flagrant pay to win scheme except without the revenue from it.

If you're going to have live events, you have to make sure that they don't ruin the game for the large majority of your playerbase that missed the event.  And that usually leads to people not caring about the events, so why have them?