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Changes and/or additions brought on by new content or expansions, and the effects on said games comm
joeyboots
Member UncommonPosts: 628
I believe it is of utmost importance for any mmo to cater to both the hardcore lvl cap racers, as well as the more casual laid back crowd. Unless your ambition is to become a niche product of course. The problem is, in most cases, the mmo community at large is an extremely fickle crowd. What one person may love, another person may hate, and as a result it creates an extreme challenge for developers to strike that golden "balance". For the past several years I have been an mmo player, I have read countless forums on countless sites, and have noticed a recurring theme.
Changes and/or additions brought on by new content or expansions, and the effects on said games community:
I don't know how many times I have read several posts from disgruntled players, about their "MMO of choice" screwing them over in the latest expansion pack or patch. "They nerfed my toon!", or "The pvp/economy is broken now!", and of course the age-old "The new classes/races are crap and/or unbalanced!" Even the world conquering monster World of Warcraft is not impervious to such criticisms. Here's a post from the World of Warcraft general discussion forum right here on mmorpg.com as an example:
I want to know your opinion was it a mistake that blizzard raised the level cap to 70 (and pretty soon 80)? For me i thought it was a mistake. The days of level 60 were uncomparable IMO. Doing Molten Core, Onyxia's Layer and Other end game instances was fun as hell. When blizzard came out with burning crusade a lot of people joined and a lot of people left. They did make a shit load of BC sales though and it was a good move on their part to up the cap. BC was fun and all, but it just doesnt have the instansity of the good ole level 60 days of MC. Blizzard says they have 9 million player, but you have to subract the players with more than one account, chinese farmers (they just dont count), and inactive accounts. World of Warcraft is on a slow dicline and when they come out with the new expansion they are going to see a lot of players quit. My brothers whole guild is quiting. In my opinion they need to start from scratch and make a whole different game and not the expansion shit. Being the makers of one of the most succesful MMO ever the game would definitly get a lot of players. Leave your opinion ~Radiator~
And here's a couple of the replys this op got:
Raising the level cap in virtually all MMORPGs is a terrible idea, and an unnecessary one.
Raising the level cap instantly trivializes and/or destroys old-world content. So, all developers end up achieving is making sure few people, if any, enjoy the content they already produced. You do not want this to happen.
Why would someone waste time running MC now? There is no point - spend an extra week or two getting to 70 from 60, and instantly get gear way better, not even from raids. Or, do old raids with twice the strength you should be doing them at, bore yourself to death, and do not get a worthwhile reward since you already have better stuff. At any rate, that MC raid they spent weeks or months developing is rendered obsolete. This is a destructive mechanic. A developer should never strive to make working content obsolete, but most do, and Blizzard is the worst offender by far, as old-world does not even compare at all to the new-world, and they have stated WotLK will be similar (in other words, as bad) - Blizzard basically admits they are on a mission to make every expansion an entirely new game that makes everything before it an exercise in pointlessness.~Sornin~
You're also forgetting about the destruction of replayability. I agree that increasing the level cap is a bad move. DAoC never increased its level cap and it did extremely well until WoW came out, but it also had more dynamic pvp that kept level 50's happy for a long, long time.
Anyway, when you increase your level cap to 70, the people that are bored with their current character will look at the old world and say, "I've got to go through all that again?" If they're not feeling this already, they surely will when they have to reach 80 instead. I would much rather be told at the beginning of the game, "The top level is 80 and getting to it is a bitch." Than, "You reach the top level! Great! Now here's 10, 20 or 30 more levels to go through!" C'mon. If you keep doing it, eventually everyone will quit. If the next expansion STILL doesn't have more class options (Shadow Knight. . .yay. . be still my heart 
) and they increase the cap again to 90. . would you stay? Every time they do this, they strain out their playerbase a little bit more. Sooner or later, the only people that will be playing are the people that have the 70-80's anyway.
The only thing that is keeping WoW in such great business is that everything else out there right now is either crap or too old to make a comeback.~puma713~
So as you can see, no matter how sterling a product you put out, you are beyond a shadow of a doubt going to have at least a few detractors. And, when the eventual expansion/content patch comes out, expect at least a few more. Another example can be taken from any one of the many mmos out there. In the end, changes to an mmo, usually creates a rift between those who like the new stuff, and those that don't. And most of the time forum flame wars erupt, with neither side giving way.
I would like to know what evryone's thought's are on this subject. Thanks for your time. ~Joeyboots~
Comments
Personally I agree with the posts you listed. In my experience with MMOs raising level caps just makes it a mad dash to farm xp to be back at the top. It usually doesn't allow for much fun in my experiences as I have always felt like I can't take my time to enjoy the new continents ect. as I want to get to max level quickly so I don't fall behind my friends and guildies. As far as making dungeons and what not out of date and pointless it is 100% true...why would anyone waste their time? WoW is indeed an excellent example of this.
Very interesting viewpoint.
Anyone else agree or disagree?
I had joined WoW the day that it first released in 2004. I tried sticking with it through it's growing pains, quickly realizing that Blizzard had made WoW with one too many ideas in mind, and they became stuck not knowing which way to run. The World PVP factor never amounted to anything significant, the idea of 40-man raid content just wasn't palatable to the masses, so smaller instances were being introduced, but with smaller and less significant rewards, and PVP Battlegrounds quickly became fodder for people that sought to exploit the Honor System, with the unfortunate side-effect of "AFK Campers" farming "honor points". Blizzard never bothered to remedy the situation until recently, with the upcoming 2.2 patch. Even still, it's too little too late, and the rewards for the Battlegrounds are trivial compared to those offered through Arena play, which is really only suited for the very well-geared and dedicated PVPers of the game. Nevermind that Battlegrounds and Arenas still had absolutely no significant contribution to the well being of the player's faction as a whole.
What's even worse is the way the latest expansion trivialized all previous efforts of even the most dedicated players of WoW, quickly diminishing powerful epic gear to substandard or completely useless items taking up virtual bagspace. Then along comes the new 25-man raid content, and of course the one that almost every WoW player focused on; Karazhan, the 10-man instance.
Karazhan was the primary stepping stone for most guilds to focus on, utilizing it to gain gear that would prepare them for the more "hardcore" 25-man content. This one instance alone quickly decimated the organization and structure of larger guilds formed during the original WoW days, reducing them to squabbling, bickering hateful masses of internal strife and in-fighting to determine the "elite" players that would have the privilege of joining the latest 10-man KZ run, and who would be relegated to the waiting list, or the "crap" team. With an incredibly ramped up difficulty level, Karazhan had all the makings of a larger raiding instance, but the imbalanced raid size requirement made it the bottleneck that filtered out the "casual" players from the "dedicated" and "hardcore". In this one move, I personally feel that Blizzard shot themselves in the foot.
Players that had successfully maintained a presence in 40-man raiding guilds were suddenly pushed off to the wayside, imbalanced difficulty levels in the new "Heroic" dungeons rendered them almost useless to guilds that chose to push forward into KZ and beyond, thus leaving those "casual" players to fend for themselves in Pick-Up Groups (PUG's). If there was ever a sign of "burnout" amongst WoW's player base, The Burning Crusade was sure to push them beyond the brink.
My guild's morale quickly dissolved into a lot of in-fighting, my friends started getting left behind or shoved off to a waiting list, and our guild quickly broke off into one of those "elitist" messes where one group was pitted againt another. I soon realized that this was not a pleasurable gaming experience at all. As more of my friends left the guild, I didn't really see a need to continue playing. I left my guild shortly after. My playtime in WoW had become less and less over the last few months, to the point where I only really logged in to say a quick "Hello!" to old friends, then logged back out. I had more fun on the Public Test Realms, where people didn't have to bother fighting over gear and instance scheduling because they could hop onto a pre-made character fully geared out in tier 6 armor.
I had to step back and realize that this was a pretty sad state of affairs when I find more joy playing on a test server among complete strangers than I did on my live server. With that in mind, it was time to leave WoW, and cancel my accounts. So, to the original poster, I'd have to say, "Yes, I think drastic changes in player content can have very lasting and negative effects on the game and the player's feelings towards it." It's happened in the past to other great MMO's, such as Dark Age of Camelot when they introduced the "Trials of Atlantis" expansion, or the many dramatic changes to the PVP system that Ultima Online encountered, or the endless changes introduced by just about every expansion for Everquest that they ever made.
Fans of MMO's settle in faster than I think game developers realize, and once they settle in, you need to watch very closely that you do not disrupt their environment too much, or you may as well plan on suffering the consequences for it. I've heard horror stories about the way Star Wars Galaxies completely overhauled their profession system, driving players away in droves, or the massive changes made to Anarchy Online in it's early years, quickly turning off it's earlier fanbase. This must break the heart of every major game developer out there, but they are in part to blame.
Usually what we buy off store shelves when games are first released are really still games in Beta form. Everyone that's been playing computer games for a fair amount of time knows this. Publishers and investors are usually pushing the developers to hurry and get the game out so they can see a return on their investments. I think this is especially true with MMO's where a true sense of game balance isn't fully realized until customers start sending in their complaints, and developers start to see patterns in the complaints made by the players. MMO players have a chance to "compare notes" as it were, basically putting a magnifying glass over more obvious problems in the game. Any changed made during the early life cycle of a game are completely understandable, but once a year or more has passed, any new changes should really involve vast improvements that are focused on satisfying the ENTIRE player base. Tweaking game balance and introducing extreme makeover changes to the game two and a half years into it's life cycle is just asking for trouble. players have already invested deeply into their characters, and they've grown accustom to their playstyles. In WoW's case, not only did they reinvent the wheel, they expected everyone to learn how to drive differently at the same time, and they expected them to like it.
Very well said. That was quite insightful.
So, do you think that Blizzard is just doin it all over again with wrath of the lich king?
By this I mean are they once again going to trivialize things that players worked hard for in outland? And if so, do you think it will affect Wow's future, and current grip on the mmo market? Or will everyone continue to play, grit and bear it, while Blizzard laughs on their way to the bank? It seems that even though a lot of players seem annoyed at the current expansion Burning Crusade, the subscription numbers haven't seemed to be affected. Matter of fact, Blizzard would tell you it's better than its ever been, with new subs still on the rise.
EVE Online usually has balanced expansions. Well, it was a bit unbalanced when everyone who had a Titan could blow hundreds of ships with 1 shot. Anyway, people learned to hold 1 shot of a Titan. And in the new expansion they added several ways to trap capital ships in a system.
I agree with this....there's alot of "WoW is doomed because WotK is coming out" talk, but look at BC, it was hardly original and there was lots of moaning and groaning by minority raiders and everyone it seems, but it's hardly made a dent in the subscription base. Still, I'm praying WAR will make Blizzard kick itself into gear and add something fresh and interesting with Wotk.
This is the very core where tBC went bad.
I used to play (5 months ago) a Troll warrior, I've always been protection. I've always been in the top 3 of tanks in any guild I was in and in my last couple of pre-tBC guilds I was either maintank or offtank, with an officer position. (last couple being very few :P)
I'm one of those people that doesn't feel comfortable with "slacking people". In terms of hardcore versus casual, I tend to stick to the hardcore group, but with a few critical differences. People slacking are people that get loot, but often tend to hang back while playing, or don't come prepared to raids (99 out of 100 times a Hunter). I used to effectively counter this by doing 3 hours of grinding for mats pre-raids, making sure I could pretty much supply every member in a 40-man raid with 5 pots of a given type. However, at some point, I just get fed up with it.
So why am I telling you this ?
Because tBC was supposed to bring more balanced raids, smaller groups are easier to manage right ? You can filter out the bad and stick with the good.
Well forget it. I've seen more guilds die on the dungeon that is Karazhan than grow. Guilds falling apart, because of heavy emotional outbursts (of which I am also guilty ) directly resulting from the fact that there simply wasn't enough room for 2 groups in the guild, but we could only invite 10 players. This resulted in a hunger for progress, false promisses to the players that were left out and a direct unfair treatment towards several members.
Oh how I would like the old days back, I'd even suffer a rollback, being gearless, no money, losing my once rare alchemy recipes and being completely stripped of any reputation ever gathered. I'd do it again..but tBC, was the death of WoW, for me.
(So now I play EVE and Lunia
)
Be honest Expansions are going to kill any level/loot based games. While the Die hards will love the expansions (and I'm sure that those guilds with large amounts of tier 6(?) gear can't wait to get new stuff to work on), the guilds that have been struggling to get their members are going to be pissed if all that work trying to get that piece of gear is destroyed by something far easier to get with in a few minutes to a hour after the new expansions. The developers should not be destroying the work that players do, Other players yes if the game is designed for, but the Devs no.
expansions are bad.
I heard this one before, where the heck it come from?
It come from the same place where the usual "at my times..." sentences come from. Expansions are the unknown, they are not known territory and they will shake the status-quo.
But who really want the status-quo I ask?
Why it is such a bad thing to get more?
I've read the posts of the previous persons and it all boils down to a social component. People go crazy over virtual items. People want, people greed.
I tell you, those people are not your friends then and losing them is much better than sticking around. I also tell you that having a real guild, made of friends, is very possible.
In the end you cannot blame the company for doing what it must do. A level based game NEEDS expansions to survive or soon it would be abandoned as the people get bored when they have nothing to do anymore. Adding more content is needed for the business to work, it is that simple.
You can argue that with a different gameplay, you would not need such things or they would not causate such social strife and i would tell that you might be right but we are talking of done games here that have such a structure, not about changing such a structure so it works. (oh and by the way, social strife is present in any game, EVE drama is a chief example of this where people do not whine about expansions, perhaps, but whine about cheaters getting favors from Devs and the like).
In the end realize that it is GOOD for the casual that Karazan takes 10 people instead of 40 and that purple outlands green items are so powerful. Not BAD. GOOD.
Finally, why do you play? Is it to have fun? Did you have fun when raiding molten core? if your answer is "Yes" then what does it matter if your raid stuff is now not top of the food chain anymore?
You had your fun, you had your reward, now you can have even more fun with the new content and get different rewards.
If the answer was no and you did those just for the titems, then the game is not fun for you anymore and you should stop playing it. Playing a game for virtual items is not healthy for your body and mind.
As for Trial of Atlantis, that is a complete different thing. It introduced raiding pve elements to a pvp-based gameplay. it even made so that the best stuff was obtained trough those pve elements. The game was clearly focused at PvPers, adding pve-heavy elements just did not appeal to their customer crowd, it is very different than WoW and TBC.
It might be that WoW is trying too hard to pleases everybody, but so far, the numbers seems to give them reason. People whines, maybe some stop playing, but many others start and their money income is untouched.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
Although the poster above me has a point, the 10 man karazhan raid is a bottleneck and thís expansion ís a bad one.
You have to get 2 groups, organized balanced groups ( notice, no social component here ), with decent raidleaders, with decent tanks, decent healers, decent everything.
Why two groups ? Because you need those to progress past Kharazhan. You have to double your actively raiding members and fill up the 5 spots with people that are randomly allowed to show up as well. Fact of the matter is, guilds often don't manage to get two wellplaying groups together, without having isssues filling up the blanks.
So what happens, is that you have 10 people hanging around in your guild that are basically fed up with being "Jokers (card referance)" and they decide to move on to other guilds, whether that other guild actually provides a better status or not.
The óther effect, is the loss of "Being part of a Guild". Guilds have become throw-away objects. People don't bond with their guilds anymore, because they're simply just stepping-stones to a higher platform.
Bigger and longer established guilds drain newer guilds from their members, picking away at their Healers and Tanks, pulling away the very foundation of a guild to succeed, leaving only the top-guilds with progress.
Guilds that have a public reputation of "Big Guns", won't have this issue at all, because for every member they lose, 5 others that would like to take their spot. But for new guilds, it's fighting over members and often only luck that decides who wins the toss....
For people like me, who try to stick to a single guild, as long as possible, try to make other people enthousiastic and try to help as much as possible with about anything you could come up with, tBC has made the game colder. I trade my guild for your first two epic healer-drops - DONE! - . Sure, the spineless player in question benefits. His epics hunger has been satisfied..for now..but guilds have become beggars.