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General: AGC Panel: The MMO Rant
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
The MMO Rant is a highlight each year at AGC. This year, Richard Vogel (BioWare Austin), Scott Jennings (NCSoft), Matt Firor (X-Mythic, Ultra Mega Games), Jessica Mulligan (X-Turbine, consultant) and Lorin Jameson (SOE Austin) teamed up to deliver the fireworks.
| Scott Jennings kicked things off with a rant on service after the sale. He pointed out that customer service people are universally the lowest paid across the industry and pointed out that Blizzard was among the industry leader in this category with a ratio of one CS rep per 5000 players. He pointed out that many companies go even further and simply farm this out to a third party.
He then took aim at World of WarCrafts peer-to-peer patch distribution system, calling it insane. Finally, Jennings took a swipe at David Perry and Acclaims plan to support their MMORPGs through advertising. He joked that players could even turn them off for a 50% decrease in experience gain. While his point was taken, it did somewhat misrepresent what Acclaim actually has planned. Nonetheless, he was quite clearly against such a model. |
You can read more here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
Seriously, as if Scott Jennings (NCSoft) has any right to comment about another companies customer service. Isn't NcSoft the company that will ban peoples forum account for expressing concern about the lack of customer service? Yes, it is. One thing NcSoft knows is how not to run a game and I would never take anything from anyone in that company for face value.
I also read that a comment was made about WoW having the worst customer service ratio problem.....let them forget NcSoft for Lineage 2. At least they reply to their customers or even better with people that can speak and understand english.
heh i think i have no need to explain myself XD
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Yep, misread. Guess it can happen when one is so enraged about current MMO problems. Sometimes I wish I had the money to start a free server for all games. Giving players a clean, how the game was ment to be type of atmosphere.
How long before MMORPG is a term of the past? Turn the clock back so we could all "Hail" one another as we raced to a Guard Zone because shadownclan orcs were after you. Save the RP.
yeah he did make a good point but i thought it was just funny how someone from SOE would point that apsect out
It is pathos we lack, and this lack of pathos makes the worlds we explore quite stale.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Antioche
Think I saw a problem...
One person was complaining there wasnt enough innovation.
While another was complaining that people shouldnt fund new and inexperienced developers that promise a lot.
Combined, these points are complete idiocy.
If anything, investors should fund as many projects as possible, while at the same time keeping a tight leash on the developers. Probably hiring an experienced ex-developer to monitor progress as an indifferent 3rd party. In any business venture, the dumbest thing you could do is go invest large sums of money in an area you have no experience in, and then expect people to just make a great product without any supervision.
Dumping money on whoever gives the best pitch is stupid, but so is only funding existing companies, who are plenty happy regurgitating the same gameplay with different themes.
The message has gotten through. Maybe in 5 years a game will be out that is worthwhile.
I hate whining. It has to be said though, we are potential customers. Tell that to the accountants.
I find it ironic that they complain that these folks are complaining that MMOs are all copying WoW in that they are all fantasy games, when if you look at the list, there are quite a few "otherworld" MMO games that are not "fantasy" as such...
Speaking of which, all subscriber numbers aside, why are some of these games, especially EVE Online considering its popularity and ratings, not key in these discussions?
I also find it ironic that someone would whine about peer-to-peer patch delivery being "insane" and yet the same company being represented by this speaker fools people into buying a so-called MMORPG game that supports 8 players at best in instanced quests and missions. Why isn't that still a core issue?
Easy, the other people were busy making their games better.
They could only get the ones that had nothing better to do than whine and make themselves look like idiots.
Not surpized they don't post a full transcript, it would only show the speakers' hypocricy even more.
Maybe it's just me but it seems that over the years Gaming companys, and those that develope MMO's especially, are becoming more and more like political partys. They each have their little inner stars that rant and rave about change and making things better, they have a hundred and one ideas on what the next "big thing" is but as red in the face as they may get during these "inspired" speaches, nothing ever gets done about it.
If anything, over the years they've actually shown that they activelly disscourage most original thoughts that come into gaming world. But man.... do they ever love to bitch about it!
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I would have liked to hear what Jessica Mulligan put together for her rant ala "Steven Colbert" style, she's really good at spotting trends in the MMO industry. If anyone is interested you can see her blog here: http://www.skotos.net/articles/BTH.shtml
She's taken a break from it for a few years, but still a good read to see where she's comming from. Also she's a consultant for companys, and the great thing about a job like that is you tell people what they already know, and get paid big bucks for it.
Yell at each other and bash each others games.. Why don't they come together and help each other with tips and tricks to each individual game instead?!
Less yelling, more innovation?
Whatever.. Just my opinion
"Huntress"
Oh they do that too, but who's interested in that? I mean, good news travels, but bad news travels faster! Does the public realy want to hear about people getting together and having actual in deapth disgutions on how to make the industry better for themselves, then go pick flowers and drink peach tea? No! They want Guts, Glory and Drama! Now that's entertainment!
Seriously, the facts are there, the mistakes have been made, all people have to do is listen to them and learn from them. If people actualy did that there wouldn't be a need for stuff like this.
The Real Deal:
What an MMO needs
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There are a lot of things people do not understand about MMORPG's. We see arguing, arguing, and even more arguing about what an MMO needs. I see stupid crap like "innovation" and "quality". I see even more views of needing "customer service" and "more interaction". Companies give more and more labels to things that arn't going to happen. In true seriousness, I believe that these people are arguing with words that they do not understand and believe it is a good thing to say because I see no executives actually doing the work to make the games those words.
An mmorpg is truly successful if it is based around an action game. If you can instantly teleport into action and start shooting/slashing people up then you will get numbers. Add a few "fun" things like guild creation, guild flags, mounts, cheap unfair spells for each class, pointless raids, and you are set. The only problem with that reality is that people have not realized that cheap, stupid, mindless gamers revolving their whole lives around the word "pwnt" have flooded into WoW, and that is why the numbers are so big. The mmorpg world is not being ruined by companies, but by gamers. There arn't a lot of true MMORPGers. I can tell you right now that if you throw a typical WoW player into a group in EQ1, they will meet their maker (excluding actual MMORPGers who play WoW because mmo's suck nowadays and their friends play WoW).
You can never destroy WoW unless you make another mindless game with the same qualities. There are not enough "true" mmorpgers to challenge WoW. They are too spread out between the other MMO's in existence.
For a research project I did for one of my year long Psychology classes, I went around to different MMO players (500 in all, took me 7 months to compile all the data) coming from all different sides of the spectrum. These are things people say would be in the "number 1" mmo (these might be deviant from mmo's, but bear with me). I put a little of a trial explanation for these wantings also to get a better understanding of them all:
1) Real Time Combat: Take out Auto Attack!
People are in fact getting tired of turned based combat with numbers. Imagine doing moves like in Ninety Nine Nights (xbox 360 game) but with more moves (incorporate jumping in fighting) and multi-angle combat(say doing a backflip over someone and hitting them midair). People want to be like Jackie Chan/Neo. The only problem is button mashing, but I know for a fact companies can work around that. Age of Conan is going to try this. Lets see how it goes. It seems a LOT of people are hyped for it.
2) More indepth housing
Creating your own house and decorating with a LOAD of different types of interactive furniture to your liking can make a game truly "cool". But even more than that, their needs to be able to be things like house interaction and people interaction. The reason housing didn't work in any game really exept SWG is because I recall clearly that SWG was the only game that there were huge "parties" of sorts being put together. I remember zipping around in my vehicle and seeing people standing inside and outside. It was extremely fun to walk in and communicate with people. Also, interactive stores are extremely nice.
3) More indepth classes
The normal "Wizard, Warrior, Rougue, etc" classes are getting worn out. Yeah, give it a different name and give it the same mechanics, it still will be boring(even in futuristic mmo's). An example I got from a lot of people for a "different" class would be a Mime or Calculator (FFT)
4) Interactive Environment for PVP
This was something that was very creative that I heard from almost 80 percent of the people. I heard most people describe wanting to be able to hide without pushing the hide button. People want to be able to have things that can't be clicked off in the options menu. Stuff like dusty wind(so you can't see very far), fog, trees, water murkyness, etc. I also heard a lot of people explaining they want to be able to sneak up on people with their gaming skills and not just a simple button. Also, people want to cut down trees to fall on the enemy or shoot mountains for stuff to fall down on an enemy (Think Phantom Dust for Xbox 1)
5) Massive PVP
I sort of had a problem with this view. The people I interviewed explained they wanted massive battles like in "LOTR" and "Star Wars". Everyone wants to be like Aragorn. The thing I disagreed with them was that right now it doesn't seem very possible to incorporate a HUGE amount of people within an area without getting serious amounts of lag (in conditions that the graphics of the game are pretty good). Who knows, maybe in the future there will be graphics cards that can handle such. Futhermore, getting 500 people on each side seems very unrealistic, but who knows maybe it can happen?
6) More creative themes
People LOVE medieval and futuristic themes, but I have heard from 63% of people interviewed that they want other themes to incorporate into the two poles. The main "mini themes" told to me were western, post apocalyptic, and atlantis.
Finally and viewed as most important....
7) Better COMMUNITY!
98% of people I interviewed didn't want other people ruining their gaming experience with stupidity. The only thing I can think of to not make this so incredibly unrealistic was to make the game so that you had to think how to defeat a feat. This will weed out a lot of dumbos.
Now I know this doesn't quite put the dot on ALL gamers, but I believe it gives a good generalistic view of what makes a game. The people I interviewed were from most games on the MMORPG.com list that were willing to participate.
Also, MMORPG companies are not looking at these hard-to-code things because they can easily be taken out or undercoded to get more and more basic minds to enter their game. It's numbers of players/money, not reputation. It will continue to be like this because there is no great force to challenge them or require them to change. It's sort of heartless, but its money.
My COMPLETE Bias:
SWG was a truly innovative game. It was incredible and revolutionary. If you want to make the game that you all are arguing about, remake SWG with the parts before the game got ruined and give the finger to LucasArts, George Lucas, and SOE if they want to get in on it and ruin it again. (I know, big lawsuit but maybe buy the rights to make the game?)
Disclaimer: This is a research I did with some logical comments put within to make an explaination. Please don't sit and flame but rather add your ideas to this post.
i find it very disturbing that the people that had their chances to speak in this situation were all top-rated MMORPG companies to start with.
They all have released IMHO fair games but still lack the overall foresite of how the end-game will turn out.
Until a company steps foward and considers all aspects of the game, balance, pvp, end-game, customer satisfaction, age groups and expandability, nothing will ever stay on top. Versitility and expandability are the keys to a great MMORPG, and diversity will attract a wider variety of player-base.
1. CCP has the right IT/IS concept on their server design, but lacks diversity in gameplay and complexity that will attract only mature audiences
2. Blizzard lacks the realism effect and endgame foresite and to keep adding expansions that contain more levels or characters, or bonus items is just dragging out the monthly subscriptions and bring back verteran players who for the most have moved on to other games because of bordom.
3. Sony lacks all the way around with patching over older code and thousands of bugs that go unfixed. I think SONY has more problems with too many Chiefs and not enough indians so to speak. And for a SoftwaRE COMPANY to "rip off" other gaming companies ideas or gameplay should be strictly enforced, or i thought it was already, if not it needs to be.
4. PlayNc, trying like hell, but like was stated before, lack of customer support and cloning one game to make another lacks creativity, Example, City of Heros - City of villans, lol clone with different skins and skill, boring...but gamers were ready for a change and actually paid for it for a short time.
5. Turbine, tried for a target audience of older game players and role players from the D&D days, and as always release started out strong, but versitility lacked for the solo aspect of a MMORP, thus lost players in massive ammounts.
Guys my views on the companies as you can see are not all that positive, and i think we need some new blood running around in the MMORPG community. The ideas and results of these "few" monster companies is just creating income and subscriptions and we all pay for their ideas which at this point in time for the MMO market is failing miserably. Companies like SONY, BLIZZARD, PLAYNC are going to be releasing patch after patch, game after game, and getting paid because we have always trusted them or are looking for a change in gameply or style, but time and time again we seem to get the same thing , just with a diferent name.
I for one am tired of it, using Star Wars as a game was a great marketing aspect of course because there was millions of Star Wars fans, just like im sure the inital sales for Star Trek online will surely rock for sales and marketing, but gameplay unless carefully thought out and exectued will turn into wow, swg, l2, or some other game in which they are basing their game model on.
The "think-tank" and statisics that companies gather to base their models on are flawed tremendously.
To end this little opinion on MMORPG companies i will close in saying this about the ones that have "spoken". If you see the error of your ways while you were employed by other companies ,and you have all of this "knowledge" then why do you continue to make poorly planned MMO's and continually complain or talk about the problems after the failures.
I have no sympathy for the greed that has been shown in the market for the last 5 years and i have added a few companies to my "DO NOT BUY FROM" list because of the unfair way the Player base was treated. MMORPG's are all about the player base and communities that buy and support the games and what they want it more important, than what you can make, because without them you make nothing.
So until you "big boys" start listening and learning please don't cry or whine about the mistakes you have made because 95% were based on money and not quality.