MMORPG - MMOCrunch

Raph Koster - a name which should be known to any student of the MMORPG genre - is celebrating a whopping 10 years of blogging. Hurrah!

Ten years ago, I started the site to archive some of the things I was telling the UO community and the LegendMUD community, things about the ways in which online communities can self-determine, things about how virtual worlds can serve as bridges, as ways to connect. To talk about how something people see as “mere games” can mean much more.

Raph is one of the people I respect in the MMORPG industry for two main reasons. First, his ideas that MMORPGs can be more than “mere games” (as he even reiterated in that brief statement above), is something I strongly believe. Heck, it’s the #1 cause for me clashing with those I semi-affectionately call “the WoW kids” on various forums around the Net. You know the type - they see MMORPGs as “just another game” and something to be defeated ASAP, just like a single player game. This generally means racing to the level cap; reading the minimal amount of quest information; ignoring everyone they see on their travels (unless they are a guildmate or someone who can help them level); concluding that any game without 24×7 PvP is crap; and having very little time for the great social aspects that MMORPGs can offer. They are half the reason I think MMORPGs are heading in the wrong direction. But I digress, dear reader.

Second, I will always hold an extreme fondess for the two years, or thereabouts, which I spent on the Star Wars Galaxies developer’s forum, where Raph held court like a benevolent king, prior to that game being launched. That was a really magical time where MMORPGs had yet to become mainstream and, even among those who did know about the game, not everyone was interested in talking to the devs about the game (yes, I know, I know, such a situation is almost impossible to conceive in today’s MMORPG market), so I was one of those who logged in every day with thoughts and ideas and generally got to shoot the breeze with Raph and other people involved with the game. I actually recruited a guild from among those posting on that dev forum - figuring them to be the “thinkers” when it came to SWG - and I wasn’t disappointed. That guild still exists (albeit playing a range of games, not just SWG), almost eight years later with a lot of its original members. I can’t see that happening as easily these days.

So here’s to you, Raph Koster, and your 10 years of blogging. Your opinions have never been fully in-step with everyone in the MMORPG community and, as the genre is increasingly dumbed-down, will probably become even less appealing to a lot of people out there. But for those of us who really think about the genre, and see what it’s capable of - beyond being single player games with lots of people logged in simultaneously - you will always be an inspiration.

Here’s to another 10 years of intriguing thoughts!

Hi, I’m Daedren. You might remember me from other articles such as “The effectiveness of raiding in only a tubesock” and “Erling Ellingson: Age of Conan Dev by day, Transvestite Cyborg by night?”. It’s me, alright, and I’m here, playing the role of the unbearer of bad news. I’m not bearing it, because it’s not even news. This little tidbit of info-mation is that Age of Conan sucks. It’s not the Gigli of the MMO industry, thank God, but that’s only because Ben Affleck turned down his role for voiceovers for King Conan. No, I’m likening Age of Conan to be more of the Alexander of the MMO Industry: Huge expectations, huge budget; huge letdown, gracious cleavage.

This article isn’t for people thinking about maybe playing Age of Conan. It’s not for those still playing Age of Conan - which, admittedly, there still are. It’s not even for the large majority of people who played the game, let it take you home, and then never called you back. This is solely targeted at a select group of people: the people at Funcom who helped make this piece of shit, and other people at other game companies who are also making a MMO. Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself “Why the hell would Funcom devs read this wordy, highly opinionated article that’s basically beating a dead horse, albeit more thoroughly and hopefully more eloquently than the past beaters?” The answer to that is I’m going to personally e-mail it to every one of them.

Funcom, now lovingly deemed “Failcom” by a good portion of the planet now, dropped an estimated $60M US pesos to produce what ended up being, for the most part, a huge disapointment to nearly everyone that played it. But hey, don’t take it from me, let’s take it from the burly, helmet clad raiders of Funcom themselves:

Erling Ellingson confirms that “subscriber base” is now 415,000 out of the original 800,000

My carefree use of the quotes here are for a reason. The term “subscriber base” seems to need an explanation.

Subscriber base is a fairly loose term which roughly means “People that might still be playing”. You see, they fail to mention that in this 415,000 they’re including anyone that still had their subscription active at the time of the report (15 August 2008).  That means if you were unfortunate enough to subscribe for 3 or 6 months at the time you bought the game, you’re included in this number. No one actually knows how many active players they have as they’ve not released any server metrics, with damn good reason.

That means that half of the people that bought Age of Conan jumped ship within the first month of the release. And, if player estimates are correct, the actual player base is more realistically somewhere around 150K or 200K players. 3 months after release. Hell, Dark Age of Camelot and Everquest 1 are pulling those numbers today. Perhaps if Erling was actually honest and forward about the game and its flaws, instead of talking it up like it’s the bees knees, his statements would gain a bit more credibility.

Next, we need to present the financial woes of Funcom and more importantly the CEO of the company:

Funcom Stock

Funcom Stock Sinking

Funcom CEO sells a pissload of his stocks, punches a baby

One really cool thing about Funcom is that all the execs have really cool viking sounding names like Olav and Gaute (pronounced like Gout). While this might be useful picking up American girls at a bar or scaring the shit out of someone by screaming their name at them, it seemingly means piss all when it comes to making a successful MMO.

Funcom stock dropped to all-time lows recently and the CEO is starting to liquidate. Next thing we know the lead Community Managers will be busted for kiddie porn and their corporate headquarters will mysteriously “catch on fire” - darn, and things were going so swell.

The Analysis

So, what the hell went wrong? Age of Conan does have a few redeeming qualities, that usually come with a price. Let’s list these redeeming qualities, along with it’s price:

Redeeming Quality     Price

Nice graphics         Shitty client

You see boobies       Shitty client

Heads do fly off      Shitty client

Good starting area    Delusion that the rest of the game will be like that

That takes us to cause of death #1: Poor client performance. Stability was actually better at release than it is now. Very few aren’t victim of the memory leak bug - causing blue screens and CTD’s quite frequently. Nothing like a few CTD’s in a night to keep that immersion level going. The client itself is clearly lacking polish, something World of Warcraft did so splendidly. All the high res graphics and tits in the world don’t mean anything if you can’t keep your customer in the game and seeing these things.

Moving on: promised features. You’ve heard it all before: stuff was on the box that either wasn’t there on release, or, functioning like Jenna Jamesons naughty parts: present but highly suspect.

Feature on the Box                    Status

DirectX 10 Support                    Rumored to exist somewhere

Drunken Brawling                      Needs more polish, like Gaute's Ferrari

Massive 150/150 PVP battles           Shitty client feature kicks in well before 300

Siege Battles, Keep Takes             Buggy and boring. If only there was an...

An actual PVP System                  Missing, presumed dead

I’ll stop right there. In all honestly, no one gives a shit what is on the box of a game: who reads that anyway? However, a certain professional level is at least expected from a game company when they promote their product. Where do we draw the line? If the next MMO that hits the market says the box will give you a blowjob once you hit level 30 on your in game character, it had better well live up to its name, no matter how uncomfortable and disturbing that sounds.

Cause of death #2: Missing basic game features

Blah, blah, blah. This is all repeat shit from everywhere else. I’m effectively beating the proverbial horse here. It’s time to move on to a more lucid analysis:

THE GAME IS NOT FUN

I suppose this makes all of theser “Causes of Death” a bit redundant. Objectively speaking, though, why is the game not fun? It’s hard to put a finger on the exact reason, much like it’s hard to explain why eating a plate of dog poo is not fun, other than it’s a plate of shit. Let’s start with this small, chaotic list:

• Instanced zones
• Lack of content past level 20
• Uninnovative questing system (kill 50 what?)
• Poor class balance in PVP
• No PVP System whatsoever
• A simple Rock / Paper / Scissors PVP design
• Horrifically boring dungeon encounters
• Lack of meaningful or interesting end game content
• Itemization that seems like it was designed by a learning impaired doorknob
• Extremely hard to customize your character or look different than anyone else
• Travel system consists of trying to find new ways to kill yourself as quickly as possible
• An economy that is completely broken
• Crafting that is nothing more than a pointless time-sink
• Identical guild cities everywhere that are, you guess it, nothing more than a pointless time-sink
• Lack of creative vision when designing combat system
• Complete lack of ingenuity regarding the spellcaster magic system
• Failure to fix bugs in a timely fashion
• Fixing bugs usually introduces more bugs into the game, which are then ignored for long periods of time
• Focusing on stupid shit like spell names and sound effects when basic features of the game are not yet implemented
• Legendary in-game customer support inspired by Verant and SOE
• Constantly surprising players by showing how little they know about their own game
• Inclusion of game breaking bugs (like gem duping or epic item farming) and then fixing them, oh, a couple weeks later

I know I missed a few. What it boils down to is that Age of Conan just doesn’t provide a unique or meaningful game experience. Characters can level to max level somewhat quickly, yay!, only to be presented with the option of doing absolutely nothing interesting other than leveling yet another character to max level. A certain kudos is in place to Funcom for even failing at the basic treadmill system; for most people, that carrot on the end of the stick (being making another character to keep waiting for the real carrot) didn’t go over to well.

That leads us into cause of death #3: Poor core game design makes the game not fun, nor addicting

Making a MMO that doesn’t encourage players to play more, come back, or feel drawn to the game is like selling crack that doesn’t get people high. I suppose some crackheads might say “but hey, I’m still smoking crack!” - but really, it’s just a sugar cube that you paid 20$ for. In that sense, Age of Conan is a MMORPG without the first “M” or the “RPG”. It’s not Massively, because you’re forced to be separated from the rest of your people either by the horribad instancing or poor zone design. It’s not RPG because you don’t feel like you are, indeed, roleplaying, due to the games limitations. At the end of the day, all we’re really looking at is a “Multiplayer Online *something*” - or, in other words, a glorified chat room with mediocre Showtime-esque nudity that is prone to memory leaks.

I’ve by far passed the normal sane limit word count and thrown any credibility away as not saying whatever the hell is on my mind, so I need to hit one last point. There is one area, I must say, that Funcom has truly outdone itself:

Funcom Devs and Public Relations guys, we salute you!

For being complete tools.

Not all of them, of course. In fact, I bet its safe to say the majority of the Age of Conan team was just doing what they were told. Kind of like the Nazis were doing what they were told when they started cooking people. Intentional Godwin aside, most people of the dev team didn’t have a big picture look at the game, so they can’t be much to blame. However, Funcom has blessed us with a few memorable souls, and by memorable I mean complete assclowns and/or utter douchebags. First, we focus on the man himself. The one, the only, the…

Gaute Godager

This guy had some potential. Though his first name sounds like unsightly gout, his last name had the chance of being epic. It could have been “Go, Danger!” or, more sinisterly, “Go, dagger!”. Now we’re just left with not giving a shit what his name is because he’s not only the “Game Director”, meaning he’s the one ultimately responsible for the state of this game, but also because his PR skills hover somewhere between “ghastly” and “humorously deranged”.

Perhaps his most famous quote is this:

“I enjoy playing WOW, I enjoy playing Lord of the Rings Online. But you know… I’m going to be a bit cheeky now, but if you’ve been to McDonalds for four or five years, and had your burger and your coke, sometimes it’s great to just have a great steak and a glass of good wine,” he said.

You’re exactly right, Gout. You were a bit cheeky. However, your analogy is a bit flawed. I’ll fix it for you:

“I enjoy playing WOW, I enjoy playing Lord of the Rings Online. But you know… I’m going to be a bit cheeky now, but if you’ve been to McDonalds for four or five years, and had your burger and your coke, sometimes it’s great to go into a restaurant, give them 50 bucks, stick around for 3 hours hoping you get food, before finally passing out with a bottle of MadDog 20/20 in your hand and still fucking hungry,” he said.

You, sir, are no steak and wine. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. You could be a rancid Salisbury Steak TV dinner, along with a glass of wine that came out of a box, but even that’s pushing it.

Last up, but certainly not least, is the great Erling Ellingson. This guy was pretty much unheard of before a few weeks ago, when he decided to show up at a couple conferences and do some interviews. Instead of handling these interviews like a normal, sane person, he decided to go another route. The route of lies, delusion and outright idiocy.

Don’t believe me? Watch this video with Jon Wood of mmorpg.com - at your own risk. This guy squirms so much when talking you can tell he’s bullshitting even with the sound muted. Here are some highlights:

“The game turned around 100% just before launch. Miracle patch…”

“The 1-20 part of the game was intended to be very detailed… When WoW launched, high end content was sparse. We have lots of stuff for players end game…”

“The PVP fugitive system, it’s all new stuff that we’re adding in. It’s not stuff that was supposed to be in before launch…”

“We’re incredibly happy with the launch of Age of Conan, it was an incredibly successful launch… “(proceeds to self fellatiate)

“It’s really few things [that didn’t make it into launch]. It’s not really big features. “

The asinine comment about PVP not being a major feature earns a collective cockpunch to Erling on behalf of every player that played AoC hoping for a PVP oriented game. It was its main selling point, and it’s the reason that most people wanted to play the game. Hell, even Erling himself states “This might surprise you, but most people that play AoC play on PVP servers” - no, that doesn’t surprise us. What does surprise us that this “PVP Oriented MMO” doesn’t even have a PVP system. Oh, and when you roll out this magical “PVP Fugitive Patch”, you’ll be taking away yet one more slightly redeeming quality that AoC once had: PVP Freedom.

Now, it’s time for desert. The icing of the cake is brought to you by the collective tools at Funcom who thought that announcing an expansion for Age of Conan was a good idea. Apparently they’re busy listening to Erling rant on about how the game is pure awesome-sauce rather than actually playing their game. Scarily enough, there is now a team of developers working on an expansion to Age of Conan, rather than fixing the fundamental problems the game has. Make it X rated and you might get a substantial player base back.

Conclusion

In summary, the main causes of the death Age of Conan were this:

1. Poor client design and performance

2. Lack of basic features included in the game

3. Unaddictive gameplay, lack of thought put into game design: the game simply isn’t fun.

Worst of all, we have a company and the makers of this game telling us that it is good. These same people will be put on the next MMO. Hell, Gaute might even get the nod to direct Funcom’s next MMO - assuming the company still exists. “Gee, Gaute, you did so well on Age of Conan, here is another 50 Million, go make us another blockbuster like it!” Get your head out of your asses, Funcom: the people that made the decisions on where this game was going need to never be allowed on another MMO project again. But hey, it’s your money, it’s your funeral.

Many people might be thinking “Man, why so fucking hostile?” - and I sympathize with that. I’m not pissed at these guys I’m making fun of, I’m more disappointed. The MMO industry is just peppered with mediocrity now and it’s almost becoming industry standard. Objective journalism is nigh-unheard of at mainstream MMO websites because they don’t want to piss anyone off. Lastly, while what I’ve written here is my opinion, it’s really the collective thoughts from nearly every veteran MMO player that had the misfortune of playing Age of Conan.

Future MMO developers: use this as a lesson learned; things not to do. Above all, do not patronize your players like they don’t know what the hell is going on. Funcom: the game is beyond saving, but try to save some face by actually admitting the games problems, and not tap dancing around the issues like a drunk circus bear. Honesty, though missing from your corporate vocabulary, goes a long way in player retention.

That’s all. Daedren out.

We love getting recognised for our work here at MMOCrunch Manor and readers of my personal blog might already realise that I’m already a two-time “Blog-O-Steria” award winner over at Channel Massive for some recent pieces I’ve tossed up here. One of these awards even meant unlocking a new badge category: the “Pwn3d by a Developer” badge which I took in the humour it was intended.

Anyway, the chaps over at Channel Massive have now taken it to the next level, with a visual representation of said badge (check it out up there on the right), and a little commentary. Enjoy. I did!

Rob of www.mmocrunch.com earned and unlocked the prestigious Pwn3d by a Developer Badge as was chronicled in Episode 55 - Pwn3d when especially angry developer, James Henley, decided to make an example of him. While we felt the treatment was unwarranted, we couldn’t help but immortalize Rob’s personal tragedy with this badge.

Last December I posted an article about the top 5 most memorable events in MMORPG history which received a huge response from the MMO community.  Today I decided it revisit this post and list a few more of the top events in MMORPG history.  These are in no particular order:

Serenity Now Bombs a Funeral - World of Warcraft - March 2006

While not the first funeral massacre, it is the most famous that I know of.  An in-game funeral was being held for a girl guildmate that died in real life when it was attacked by a rival guild Serenity Now.  The guild posted on message boards about the funeral and asked players not to break it up as it was in a PvP zone.  Obviously one guild had other plans.  Click the link above to see the video.

Lord Kazzak Terrorizes Stormwind - World of Warcraft - 2006

Before the release of The Burning Crusade, it was possible to lure Lord Kazzak, an outdoor raid boss to Stormwind.  Once there he basically became invincible since he gains massive health every time he kills someone.  With the release of TBC, Lord Kazzak has since been chained to the Blasted Lands.

Shard of the Herald - Asheron’s Call - Nov 2000

The Shard of the Herald was the final shard in Asheron’s Call which was hidden until the first 6 shards had been destroyed.  With the destruction of the final shard, the legendary demon Bael’Zharon would be released as well as new more powerful weapons and items for player .  However players were given a choice to either attack or protect the final shard.  The playerbase on all the servers became divided into those wanting to destroy the shard and those who swore to protect it.  As the battle raged across AC’s servers, the defenders held their ground and were able to protect the shard, this was until the developers stepped in to help the attackers.  NPC controlled by developers contacted the most powerful players and those that passed the test were given  powerful items for their service and dubbed Bael’Zharon’s “Dark Masters”.  Shortly after the Shard of the Herald was destroyed on all servers except for one, Thistledown.  Defenders on Thistledown got organized and started to monitor the status of the shard and setup shifts where players would come to protect it.  The defenders were able to successfully defend the shard until once again the developers step in and stacked the side of the attackers by adding several mythological followers of Bael’Zharon to aid in the attack.  The Shard of Herald was thus destroyed, but the defenders of the shard on the Thristledown server were rewarded with a statue bearing the names of the leaders to commemorate those who stood against Bael’Zharon’s dark followers.

Fansy The Famous Bard - Everquest - July 2001

 

When Everquest created the no rules server Sullon Zek , they didn’t anticipate a Bard by the name of Fansy.  The no rules server was just that with one exception, players below lev 6 could not be player killed.  The new server was split into good and evil with most players choosing to become evil.  Eventually Fansy decided to join the server on the side that no one wanted to play on and became a bard.  Fansy leveled to level 5 when he realized he could train a sand giant, a high level monster that normally a bard couldn’t train until a much high level.  But this was a no-rule server so Fansy proceeded to create an small army of sand giants.  Still being level 5, Fansy then traveled through out the realm slaying anyone in his path.   Eventually the highest level player on the server came up against Fansy, but being invulnerable stood no chance.  Eventually GMs were notified of this loophole, but for 3 days Fansy was allowed to wreak havoc on the Sullon Zek server until finally the no-rule server got some rules.

Shadowbane Server Hacked - Shadowbane - May 2003

What started out as items and money disappearing from players characters, soon turned into the most chaotic event in MMORPG history.  Hackers were able to take control of one of Shadowbanes servers for a few hours and basically do whatever they wanted.  It seemed like the hackers has a sweet tooth for newbie blood as noobs were the main targets of the attacks.

“The population of an entire Shadowbane town was forcibly moved to the bottom of the sea, where they drowned. City guards turned feral and attacked town residents. Mobs of never-before-seen superpowerful creatures, seemingly spontaneously spawned from the ether, began to prowl the streets unchecked, killing characters in the most painful way possible.”

One safe zone in particular, “Newbie Island” became one of the main targets.

“Experienced players looked on in horror as new players were slowly and gleefully dismembered by ax-wielding ogres.  Others just laughed and looted the characters’ bodies after the ogres were done.”

Eventually this hacked server was rolled back and all players were able to regain their items.

Massive Protests - Starwars Galaxies - 2005

 

When Starwars Galaxies did the “Combat Upgrade” players of the community rose up in protest stating that the new combat system was too simple and was dumbed down. Cancellation rose, but eventually leveled off and SWG started to grow back until the release of the “New Game Enhancements” update.  This was the last straw for players as the new upgrade further dumbed the game down.  Protest erupted on the SOE message boards asking for an explanation.  SOE decided to delete any negative posts and then started to mass ban users, which eventually lead to the forums being closed down.  However players were not done yet and decided to take their protest in-game.  Meeting up in star ports players cranked up their graphics settings and started to open multiple windows using their data pads, coupled with channel spam and the fact everyone was in the same location caused server loads to sky rocket.  Players were being threatened with account suspension and bannings, but the players got their point across, although it was too late to save SWG.

Fallador Massacre (666 Massacre) - Runescape - June 6, 2006

 

On this day 6/6/06 a player by the name of Cursed_you was about to reach lev 99 in construction, the highest level ever reached for that skill and decided to celebrate by having a house party.  As players showed up, many went into the dungeon where they could participate in PvP.  After some time Cursed_you had enough and decided to expel everyone out of his house.  What happened next no one could have predicted.   With so many players being expelled at once, the game just couldn’t handle it.  So when players were out of Cursed_you’s house they realized they retained the ability to PvP, anywhere!  Many quickly saw the benefit and started killing anyone they could, taking their gold and looting their corpses.  GMs quickly became aware of the situation and tried to warn other players to log off or bank their items, but it was already too late.

 

Regular readers will know that I don’t think too highly of Funcom’s truly awful Age of Conan. Part of the pain/hate/call it what you like, is that I wanted the game to do extremely well and, yes, I believed Funcom when it said that it would take the lessons learned from Anarchy Online and apply them to AoC’s development and launch. Huh, what hollow words they seem now.

Some might think this is an overreaction, but I felt that Funcom had personally visited my house, pissed in my Wheaties and slapped me in the face for good measure when it pulled its lets-make-the-first-20-levels-really-good trick, resulting in beta testers and games reviewers assuming the whole game was just as good and pumping out quick reviews that rate AoC far, far, far more highly than they would of if they had actually played through the full game.

Anyway, enough bile for now, I saw a piece this morning where AoC’s Erling Ellingson has commented to Massively about the game and has confirmed that with over 800,000 boxes sold, only 400,000 people remain subbed, three months later. This figure had been thrown around on the official AoC forums for a couple of weeks following the latest Funcom quarterly report which revealed as much but, as you’d expect, a small army of Funcom fanboi’s over there actively denied it was possible and the game was in great shape and the naysayers were only a small part of the forum community only. Wow. I wonder how those guys are feeling now? The stats were right, guys.

I mean, the 50% drop just staggers me. Sure, a game will NEVER retain 100% of its subscribers after the first month, but to lose 50% of them in just three months seems like a rather high figure to me. What about you? I just can’t see this being healthy at all.

And as some other online pundits have already said, that figure of 400,000 current subscribers would undoubtedly include (i) People who are on their first free month and, like 400,000 people before them, definitely won’t be resubbing and, (ii) People who bought six-month subs who could very well be no longer playing the game out of pure disgust, yet will get counted as subscribers for some months to come. So the overall population might not have finished dropping yet.

We’re raising the bar around here. We’ve noticed that a lot of alleged MMO news sources and Warhammer info sites have been spawning lots of generic, non-informative and highly “graphical” previews and sneak peaks at some of the features of Warhammer Online. That’s all good for some, but what about our readers, many who are still using AOL or Compuserve dial-up on a 56k line? Trust me, they are out there. Hell, I even got an email from a reader who still uses Prodigy.

We’ve had enough of these flashy “Character Generation Previews” - yeah, thanks for the 10 minute video watching you stumble around trying to make your Dark Elf’s tits look bigger. Also, quite frankly, all of these videos of PVE battles are pretty damn boring. Rather than add to this problem, we’ve decided to bring you a real, original and informative look at RVR in Warhammer Online.

So, I logged on my Bright Wizard last night and headed for the frontiers for some good ol’ PVP action. I missed an important piece of information as I logged in; either due to consumption of alcohol or my one handed navigation thanks to my new duel monitor setup.

The piece of information I missed was this:

Order population: 372  Destruction population: 561

Knowledge of this might have made me enter the RvR lands a bit more carefully. I entered the frontier land, past the “small group” of Order I saw (why are they standing near our RvR entrance, I thought to myself) and then promptly got knocked 30 feet the wrong way by some level 40 guy and then chewed in half by 7 Squigs.

Using the Warhammer in game editor, lovingly called “WARPaint”, I drew this up as a summary of my night of RvR:

All kidding aside, I think that Warhammer Online does have a bit of a population balance problem. I’ve done a strict scientific analysis on this, involving me logging into each EU server at least once, and I’ve decided that Destruction has roughly 20-30% more players at any given time. Keep in mind that this strict scientific study was, in fact, done in one night. Word from the US has roughly the same estimate.

So, what’s the reason behind this? Are Destruction classes just more interesting? Do the girls look better? Is there free beer? Is the inner emo of many players finally being reached, and you find that playing a Destruction character is a way to tell the world you are a beautiful and unique snowflake in a tasty goth flavor?

What do I think? I think that it’s a combination of a couple things: Destruction classes are more interesting, Orcs and Goblins are cool, and the chicks definately do look better on the evvvulll side. Truth is, they’re just showing more skin. Order Elves, in my opinion, are pretty “meh” in regards to aesthetics and class fun factor. Dwarves and Humans have the most interesting class choices of Order, yet both only have 3 to choose from, sadly.

So, how will Mythic handle this? Will Destruction be the new Albion/Alliance zergfest of Warhammer Online? Lastly, how will this effect your decision on what faction to play? I know after a couple nights on both sides of the fence, there is no way in hell I’m going to play Destruction on release.

There’s a young guy over on the BioWare forums who has lately taken a real shine to disagreeing with absolutely everything I say when I’m posting over there. It’s kind of charming (albeit in a slightly annoying way), to the degree that I’m sure he’d happily argue that black was white, up was down, and left was right if I had reason to start posting about such things on those forums. But, happily, he did go some way to inspiring this post, along with a selection of other forum posters across a wide spread of the MMORPG community out there.

You see, there’s an attitude I’m coming across more regularly these days that suggests if an MMORPG doesn’t have more than 150-200k subscribers, it is some kind of abject failure that hasn’t lived up to its developer’s wishes. (Yes, it’s always nice when forum posters are seemingly flies on the wall of all these development meetings and, apparantly, have the inside running on what developers want from their games, where they live, and probably what they’re planning to eat for dessert after dinner tonight… but I digress, dear reader).

It seems rather obvious to me, meanwhile, to point out that the MMORPG market is, ultimately, a finite market. There are only so many video game devotee’s who are yet to be made aware of the concept (especially after the success of WoW took the genre out of relative obscurity), and there isn’t a new batch being grown on trees somewhere, or cloned in the basement of someone’s house to appear next weekend. What we see now is, I believe, the market as it stands for the next few years, give or take some minor fluctuations.

Added to this finite market concept is the fact that the market is fragmented. Between the bona fide MMORPG classics that people are still playing (in varying numbers), such as UO, EQ, SWG, EQ2, DAoC, CoH/CoV and even WoW… to the newer games that have yet to find their real place in the market, such as PotBS, AoC and the soon-to-be-released WAR… to the titles we’re all eagerly anticipating such as TSW, DC Universe Online and BioWare’s un-named project… oh, not to mention the plethora of freebie games on the market from Asian countries… we have gamers, with limited funds, and time, spread really thinly. The marketplace is super-fragmented right now and is only going to get MORE fragmented as time goes by. Scary, huh?

Where does this leave the industry? Sadly, I must concur with a number of my peers and say that it will probably stifle innovation. As more companies become risk-averse, they will seek to release games that don’t “rock the boat” too heavily, in a desperate bid to grab a couple of hundred thousand subs; which seems to be pretty much the average market share that games in such an environment - even really good games, mind you - can pull these days. A friend of mine used to work at SOE with the SWG team and he said to me, rather sadly I must report, that we’re unlikely to see a game like SWG ever again, precisely because it thought too far outside the box to what “the norm” is in today’s MMORPG market and it’s highly unlikely a developer would ever green-light such a different kind of game.

I desperately hope he’s wrong and, as you can tell from past writings of mine, I long for a developer to do something absolutely mind blowing and creative in the MMORPG space for a change… I really do hope for that… but part of me realises that, yeah, he’s probably right about things. The market, in many ways, is totally f*cked, folks.

Oh, and my little mate over on the BioWare forums? He disagrees with the concepts expressed in this post after I ran a cut-down version of these comments to see how it would fly. I guess it’s comforting to know that the more the industry loses its spark and edge, the more some things retain a comforting sameness that money just can’t buy.

Hi, I’m Daniel. You might remember me from such other MMO articles like “It was great except for the Elves with 5 o’clock shadows” and “Tits and Fatalities aside, Age of Conan sucks flaccid donkey genitals”. I’m new here; and bringing you a highly opinionated, wordy rant on the latest of MMO trends: the term “WoW Killer”.

The meme itself isn’t new: the first earliest recorded instance of this meme was by the scribe Pontus Sextus Alphonsus in 300 A.D, writing about the threat of an invasion from far eastern Empires into the vulnerable Roman empire. He referred to these savages as possibly the first “Rome-killer” -  yeah, ok, I just made all of that up. The term “WoW Killer” has been kicking it around since WoW first became a success back in 2004. Any major MMO release since then has been plagued with this term: “Will this game be the WoW Killer? Will this game gain self-awareness, attack the Blizzard server farm with a targetted nuclear strike, then start searching for Sarah Connor? Does this game have the potential to learn kung-fu?”

No, it doesn’t. The term itself implies that WoW in fact can be killed, which it can’t. Sure, it can lose some subscribers: even for arguments purpose, it’s possible (though not likely) that games like Warhammer Online have more total active subscribers than WoW. Does that mean WoW has, in fact, been killed? No. It would still be the 2nd largest MMO subscriber game, and it would still be the all time biggest MMO in terms of subscribers. Even in this best case scenario, WoW would still have a piss-ton of subscribers by industry standards.

Many people say that the only thing that can kill WoW is WoW itself. I liken this to people watching too many Terminator movies as kids or possible temporal lobe damage from hearing the pre-pubescent screams of Eddie Furlong too many times. WoW can’t kill itself, but it’s supporting staff of humans can perhaps muck things up a bit. A lot of WoW subscribers were alienated or quit after the Burning Crusade expansion: WoW subscriptions were down to around 2 or 3 million actual subscribers and about 17 million chinese gold-farmer accounts. Wrath of the Lich King might do the same thing; and it’s good to theorize that if Warhammer Online provides as good of a PVP experience as everyone hopes it does, it will take a good deal of the “real PVPers” away from WoW (if any still play) - and WoW can be happy in deluding people that the little e-sport Arena games are “real PVP”. At the end of the day, though, there is still a core group of people that love WoW for what it is: whether it’s because it was their first MMO, the majority of their friends play, or even it’s cozy familiarity: people will always stay and play World of Warcraft, and in great numbers.

TL;DR version: WoW has too many loyal fans and addicts to ever be “killed” as a MMO. End of story.

Now that we’ve determined that WoW can’t be killed, it’s time to move on. Even though it can’t be terminated, it can still lose a lot of customers, or better yet, it *is* possible that another MMO has just as big of a following and playerbase as WoW does without stealing their customers. In fact, this latter scenario is the best scenario because it means that players have been gained from outside the genre and the industry has indeed grown. This can’t really happen with titles like Warhammer Online or Age of Conan because it’s still stuck in the same genre (Fantasy) and is really just a rehash of the same thing - and maybe niched to a certain demographic, like PVP/RVR with WAR or Nudity and … well, whatever for AoC.

So what can rival WoW in fanbase and subscribers? A non-fantasy, perhaps “non RPG” based MMO that is rock solid, using a known IP. Whether this is a MMOFPS or MMORTS (or even both) - this is really the only chance that the MMO industry has at ever producing something that rivals the beast of WoW in revenue and following. Using this logic, companies like Mythic, Funcom and 38 Studios actually hurt the MMO industry because they won’t be generating many new players (from outside the genre) and have instead been focusing on stealing other players away from other similar games. Meanwhile, hordes of fantatical FPS and RTS players are uncatered for in our over-saturated Fantasy MMORPG market.

I digress; in conclusion, let’s stop using this tired term “WoW Killer”. The term is just plain inaccurate; we need to be more creative and constructive in representing the MMO industry. So, let’s focus on objective reviews and previews of upcoming releases and advancing and expanding the industry, rather than throwing this lame meme into the mix with every new title that’s about to be released.

So WoW appears to be getting a new mount… a motorcycle no less… called “The Hog”. You can see some pictures of it here.

Internet commentators, like Steve Danuser, are already up in arms about The Hog appearing in beta testing:

The helicopter flying mount made by engineers was pushing it for me. Once Azeroth has the motocycle, what’s next? When will I be able to get a Hummer to drive around in, or a Maserati?

To me, as a non-WoW person, The Hog actually makes WoW look more appealing. I’ve always had a soft spot for “steampunk” type things, and always enjoyed the gnomes as a race in EQ2. To me, this is the kind of crazy, madcap thing I’d expect if I was a WoW player. To all those who are getting uptight about it, might I suggest (in the nicest possible way), that you’ve probably out-grown the game and might be looking for a more “serious” realm to adventure in, instead?

It seems that the walls of World of Warcraft are impenetrable as yet another hyped MMO is broken against them, I’m of course speaking of Age of Conan.  Age of Conan was probably the most hyped MMO in the last few years and while the hype helped AoC to break sales records, it didn’t last long.  Age of Conan became the fasted selling MMO of all time,  shipping 1 million units by June and Funcom stated it had 700,000 accounts by June 30th.

While off to a good start in terms of sales, the game itself did not start off so well.  Across any MMO gaming site you’ll read about player complaints and gamers leaving AoC due to the many issues.  While Funcom has not released any figures since June 30th, it is rumored that about 1/2 of the player base has left the game.  Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime also recently mentioned that “40% of the World of Warcraft subscribers that left for Age of Conan have since returned“.

Although the walls of WOW still stand strong, like all great world powers they must eventually fall.  In an article at GamePlayer.com.au, they write about the recent “Recruit-a-Friend” campaign as a sign that subscription numbers are falling and Blizzard is looking for ways to bolster them until the release of Wrath of the Lich King.  I myself made a prediction back in May stating that WoW would reach its peak this summer and then start to decline.

It seems that with every new big MMO, WoW is slowly starting to feel the pinch.  With Warhammer Online on the horizon and a few other MMOs (Huxley, The Chronicles of Spellborn) before the years end, can WoW continue it’s growth?  I’m sticking with my earlier statment and say no, it can’t.

Also, this article is not to say that AoC is a failure, I’m merely stating that AoC did not live up to the hype and is little to no threat to the WoW empire.