SOE President: "Content-driven" MMOs have become unsustainable

[Kane]

SWG, SOE first made great, then fucked up the ass,

so what youre saying is that their designers are einstein level genius in comparision to their competitors?

they have two good sandbox MMOs under their belt.

which is infinite times the amount of the competition.

Many will argue that "best to date" is reserved for UO.

i was comparing SOE to their existing competition, not 20 years ago.

 

[Angthoron]

SWG, SOE first made great, then fucked up the ass,

so what youre saying is that their designers are einstein level genius in comparision to their competitors?

Well, someone compared BioWare's writers favourably to Thi4f's writers the other day. Doesn't mean BioWare's writers are suddenly good.

they have two good sandbox MMOs under their belt.

which is infinite times the amount of the competition.

EVE fanboys will disagree with your assessment.

Many will argue that "best to date" is reserved for UO.

i was comparing SOE to their existing competition, not 20 years ago.

Ah, I thought we were talking objective quality here. Nevermind, I'll just move along.

 

[Kane]

Doesn't mean BioWare's writers are suddenly good.

"Good" is a relative term.

EVE fanboys will disagree with your assessment.

maybe, but doesn't change my point: looking at the numbers SOE is both the most experienced and most successful sandbox dev.

Ah, I thought we were talking objective quality here.

whatever objective quality is, but quality has ceased to exist over a decade ago.

 

[set]

MMOs are virtual societies and thus should emulate all the fun things we enjoy about society. It's as simple as that.

There needs to be enough order that people know the risks with breaking order. There need to be enough rewards for breaking order so that players break order.

EVE doesn't have an "unshiftable power structure" - EVE has had alliances come and go, some as large as 50%+ of the galaxy defeated by small knit bands of dedicated players. The game is too numbers-heavy, too 'slow-paced' for the average 'gamer' and this is obvious by how successful WoW is. WoW is successful because of base psychology - idiots see the yellow ! and do the thing until it's 10/10 then they see the ? and get all excited and get the thing and the gold form the guy then rinse repeat until max level where instead a few people in vent tell you how to dance for a few hours in order to perhaps maybe if nobody else wants it receive some thing with instructible values and PURPLE text.

It's about colors, instant gratification, shaping, modeling, skinner box stuff; mixed with a little peer pressure and dripfeed novelty.

I've played a few sandbox MMOs and more esoteric muds. These games are about exploration, character advancement, and character interaction lastly. Explore the options the game provides - viscerally or in terms of the options presented, then advance your character by finding things or doing tasks for others; lastly, you build relationships with people, be they friendships or rivalries.

One particular MUD I played, I played as a thief. A jerk guild was preying on new players and they were pretty careless about security. I lockpicked into their guild HQ and invited my whole guild inside. We made off with everything they had stored there and returned a lot of stolen items to the new players that were still sticking around. It was great fun and pretty exciting, you know, to break into a palce like that with your own wits and then impromptuly organize your guild to haul text-objects out of a text-room. This is something we'd never see in any mainstream MMO, because you can't have theft in a game that's supposed to appeal to the masses. You can't have anything that could be construed by "hardcore" by anybody. You need safety -- everywhere, almost all the time. Items and worlds and players need to be static, otherwise people might get upset. The most players will put up with is ganking and that's because they know all they're losing is a little bit of their time - and time isn't that important to these people yet.

There's a big difference between a good MMO and a successful one. You can maybe have both if you keep player populations small and tightly-knit, because then everybody knows your name- and it's less about how well you do in the game. But once you emphasize faceless raiding or loot hoarding players just see greed, envy, despair and desire- and taking away items, letting the game ebb and flow? That's too scary for them.

 

[Jadeite]

Good MMOs are all first and second generation and on private servers, like EQ, WoW, FFXI, EQ2, and others I have not played. If you want to support MMOs, play these--on private servers. These are classic versions--no cash-grabbing, no changes to attract other people.

If you play modern games, you are supporting the industry.

A "theme park"--what is that? That is something that people play on launch and abandon in weeks or months. It is a novelty ride.

 

[set]

Supporting private servers does not support MMOs in any way. More or less, it just supports casuzalition, because casuals are not capable enough to log onto private servers, so MMO companies will just target them more not less.

 

[Jadeite]

All the MMO companies have ruined their reputation. At one point I followed most of them: Squaresoft, Sony, Microsoft, Origin, NCSoft, Blizzard--companies that you would expect to make good games. In the end, they all let me down. Now you cannot even recognize the names. If a company is anonymous, or formed for only one game, with renegades from other companies, that company is thus unaccountable. Ever heard of Jake Song and "XL Studios"? He had a great vision for a game, launched it, then abandoned it. What will become of "XL Studios"? Is this even a company, or a racketeering outfit? I bet dollars to donuts they will never make another game. The same was true with "Bluehole Studios". TERA was a beautiful game. But the world was empty. That game is now unattended to. What business do we hold accountable for this? Whose reputation is ruined as a result? If you look at the facts, all these MMO developers are like mercenaries. They wander like tribesmen among all these different companies. If even the employees are not loyal to their companies, what reason would I have for being loyal?

I am interested to know what you think I should support. It seems to me that the industry is corrupt, and that the only way to stop corrupt business is not to give it money.

 

[Ranselknulf]

A MMO shutting down isn't racketeering.

If you ever read those EULA's that come with the games, you have no right of ownership for characters or anything else contained on their servers.

A good way to think of MMO's is you are paying a subscription to rent access to the game. You may develop and progress characters but you don't own them. You would still own the client though, but the client doesn't work without the server (unless somebody sets up a private one).

Some newer MMO's allow you to sell or transfer in game items for real money which you can cash out. I'm not sure how those EULA's are written but my "feeling" is they still maintain ownership of the actual server content itself (ie the pixel shit that pops up on your screen for your Master Sword +2). When you sell something that way I think you are probably selling the rights to use the item in the game or some other legal mumbo jumbo hair splitting.

Probably some sort of disclaimer that they can shut down the game at any time and you have no right to sue because you don't own the pixels. You just the right to use the pixels while the servers are running which they reserve the right to shut down at any time.

Just because a developer shuts down a server or doesn't want to make another game doesn't turn their previous business efforts into a racket. Although, something like selling a year long membership and shutting down a game after a few weeks probably could be illegal but I doubt you are referring to something like that as your reasoning for calling it a racket (disclaimer idk anything about this XL studios).

Also, I wouldn't call the industry corrupt, they just focus on the wrong shit. They put profit ahead of making good games so anybody who is looking for something more in depth than the standard popamole shit has to look to private servers or unknown developers.


Private servers and Indie/Unknown developers aren't a Panacea either. There are plenty of corrupt private servers also (banning people just to ask for donations to be unbanned, deleting items or causing other issues to make people pay for assistance), but there are some good ones also whose only interest is in making a decent game while breaking even. The usual problem with private servers is the development efforts are spread out and indie developers usually don't like to share some or all of their work, because if they shared, then what would set their server apart from the others? I don't want to turn this into a big to do on software development and what works best because what's best probably varies based on school of thought and I have no experience with this besides doing a few coding web tutorials here or there.


There are projects out there that have lots of developers collaborating and those private servers usually end up the most polished and best running.

I'm honestly skeptical a indie mmo (or any mmo) can be good and work out in the current climate. If a indie mmo tried to kickstarter an idea I'm sure they would get beat to production by a larger studio or company copying the idea. MMO's have been self cannibalizing each other and scooping up anything that has a remote scent of being novel or untried.


Hmmm.. maybe the best way to fix the MMO market would be for something popular enough like RPGMaker but for MMO's to be developed.. MMO Maker? INB4 everything will just be a WoW clone

 

[set]

"MMOMaker" would be basically impossible to develop. You would need a highly modular MMO engine even a dummy can figure out -- and its performance can't be shit. You'd be hard pressed to create an intuitive MMO-maker. You'd be hard pressed to make an MMO engine generic enough to even make "rapid development" possible; I mean, a lot of money for MMOs is spent on asset creation and network optimization... It'll be a long time before the cost of developing a MMO is driven down.

Writing a EULA does not give you proof to rip off people. EULAs for games are largely untested in the courts.

 

[Ranselknulf]

It's a difference of opinion but I don't think shutting down a game server is ripping people off.

I'm betting many others feel the same way as me also.


I might not be happy about a server getting shut down, but I'd hardly feel ripped off as long as I enjoyed my time playing the game.


I'm sure MMO Maker is a possibility at some point in the future. Computers keep getting faster. It might not run next gen graphics and all the best effects and shit but I'm sure it's possible to have reasonable 3D graphics.

 

[set]

It's not the graphics, it's the configuration and set up of a server that is unlikely to be intuitive. Maybe, if we can ever have computers process natural language better... but that's a long way off... RPGMaker doesn't require much skill to use, but MMOs are distributed systems. I think you need a background in programming to make one, even using some fancy high level editor.

 

[KevinV12000]

Any man in charge of a gaming company that refers to what he is offering as "content" to be "consumed" has already missed the point.

Though, to be fair, EQII is the only thing left in today's MMO world that retains the complexity of the earlier concept of computer games, as opposed to video games.

And, it also should be noted, blaming SOE only for the ruination of SWG simply is not right; LucasArts was the driving force behind that change. The idiocy later on display in the Star Wars prequels gives you a good idea of the kind of changes LucasArts imposed on SOE.

 

[Ranselknulf]

I wonder how much Lucas Arts was pressured by SoE to make changes that would appeal to a wider (casual) audience though.

Things don't happen in a vacuum.

Although the lead developer behind the NGE changes did commit suicide because of the criticism. He must have felt fully responsible but I'm sure there were outside forces/pressures.

 

[Norfleet]

A MMO shutting down isn't racketeering.

No, it's a racket coming to an abrupt end. The MMO itself is the racketeering. The shutdown is the racket coming apart at the seams.

If you ever read those EULA's that come with the games, you have no right of ownership for characters or anything else contained on their servers.

Which is exactly the kind of weaselly thing someone would say when they are running a racket, yes.

 

[Ranselknulf]

So can I get clarification on the illegal activities here.

Are you suggesting that players who subscribe to mmo's own the characters and the shutting down of the server is theft?

 

[Hobo Elf]

The whole genre has become unsustainable and is dying out. The only way to get success with an MMO these days is to make bank with retail, with subscriptions being gravy on top. The average modern MMO player does not play for longer than a month. There is no sustenance with players like this and most of the old MMO players don't give a fuck anymore because all they churn out are more pathetic attempts at getting WoW's audience.

 

[Ranselknulf]

I think the genre could be decent one day.

Playing games with others isn't inherently a bad idea. Just all the modern implementations of it suck.

 

[Kane]

The whole genre has become unsustainable and is dying out. The only way to get success with an MMO these days is to make bank with retail, with subscriptions being gravy on top. The average modern MMO player does not play for longer than a month. There is no sustenance with players like this and most of the old MMO players don't give a fuck anymore because all they churn out are more pathetic attempts at getting WoW's audience.

The problem killing the genre are not the 'average MMO players' but execs that think they can get comparable numbers to WoW. A sustainable MMO, even on subscriptions, is very much possible, you just have to separate yourself from the idea of millions of players and instead target < 100k sub numbers with a very specialised niche project.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I think the genre could be decent one day.

Playing games with others isn't inherently a bad idea. Just all the modern implementations of it suck.

The MUD approach of sub 100 ~ 200 players per world could be a good way of going about it. People are generally happier in small and tight communities. Also I've never seen any of the small communities shun new players away in any of the old MMO's that I played. Generally they were always glad to see new players and would always help them in any way they could, so anyone claiming that a tight group of friends won't accept new players is bull.

The whole genre has become unsustainable and is dying out. The only way to get success with an MMO these days is to make bank with retail, with subscriptions being gravy on top. The average modern MMO player does not play for longer than a month. There is no sustenance with players like this and most of the old MMO players don't give a fuck anymore because all they churn out are more pathetic attempts at getting WoW's audience.

The problem killing the genre are not the 'average MMO players' but execs that think they can get comparable numbers to WoW. A sustainable MMO, even on subscriptions, is very much possible, you just have to separate yourself from the idea of millions of players and instead target < 100k sub numbers with a very specialised niche project.

Well, yes. I think the fish-like attention span of players we have is a byproduct of only WoW clone MMO's being crapped out by these hack studios. People buy the next new hyped MMO, see that it's more of the same but less polished / buggy and then go back to WoW. People have been conditioned into playing an MMO for only a short period of time.

 

[Kane]

I think the genre could be decent one day.

Playing games with others isn't inherently a bad idea. Just all the modern implementations of it suck.

The MUD approach of sub 100 ~ 200 players per world could be a good way of going about it. People are generally happier in small and tight communities. Also I've never seen any of the small communities shun new players away in any of the old MMO's that I played. Generally they were always glad to see new players and would always help them in any way they could, so anyone claiming that a tight group of friends won't accept new players is bull.

The whole genre has become unsustainable and is dying out. The only way to get success with an MMO these days is to make bank with retail, with subscriptions being gravy on top. The average modern MMO player does not play for longer than a month. There is no sustenance with players like this and most of the old MMO players don't give a fuck anymore because all they churn out are more pathetic attempts at getting WoW's audience.

The problem killing the genre are not the 'average MMO players' but execs that think they can get comparable numbers to WoW. A sustainable MMO, even on subscriptions, is very much possible, you just have to separate yourself from the idea of millions of players and instead target < 100k sub numbers with a very specialised niche project.

Well, yes. I think the fish-like attention span of players we have is a byproduct of only WoW clone MMO's being crapped out by these hack studios. People buy the next new hyped MMO, see that it's more of the same but less polished / buggy and then go back to WoW. People have been conditioned into playing an MMO for only a short period of time.

People have, but I am not people.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Alas, we are the minority. I think us oldfag MMO players could be a profitable niche but everyone gets too greedy for their own good when they look at WoW sub numbers.

 

[set]

I also agree with Hobo Elf. I think MMOs are too obssessed with the "massive" scope of the game. But let's get real, most MMO servers never eclipse 5k concurrent users per server. Even EVE only manages 30-60k concurrent users in the whole damn universe.

I've played a lot of smaller muds that are amazingly fun and don't feel like ghost towns, with sub 50 concurrent users.

It's a lot easier to design an interesting game where maybe 200 concurrent users is the maximum threshold per "game instance". You can design a game which lets 1000-5000 people "find their economic and roleplaying niches" in a game world (200 concurrent is about 1k-5k "active" users)). What made SWG fun, and what makes many MUDs fun, is how you can be the "go to person" for a particular craft or objective. Small communities let people get to know each other; fame is easier to obtain and roleplaying is much more possible. You're not that easy to replace or forget.

 

[Kane]

Alas, we are the minority. I think us oldfag MMO players could be a profitable niche but everyone gets too greedy for their own good when they look at WoW sub numbers.

Maybe. But you still can make a conscious effort. Don't buy shit games. Buy good games. Their marketing department is trying to shittalk you into buying the game, so inverse the deal and shittalk their shitty games on forums and news outlets. It's important that these fuckers all go bankrupt.

 

[Hobo Elf]

But I do make a conscious effort. I haven't bought an MMO since WAR and AoC. Even if I wanted to buy any MMO there just isn't anything that interests me at all. Not even a smidgeon.

 

[Xor]

I don't think the problem is with the MMO audience. I think the problem is that the publishers pushing for these MMOs just aren't willing to bring the same amount of development time, resources, and sheer quality control that Blizzard put into WoW. And I don't think that'll ever happen again. In order to smoke the WoW audience out, a game would have to have the level of quality content and polish that modern MMOs have with a massive amount of content and enough challenge to keep people invested, along with a development pipeline efficient enough to produce new content at a steady rate to keep people playing.