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Planned Obsolescence and MMORPGs
Thanks to Stratics for their column discussing the concept of 'planned obsolescence' as it relates to MMORPG expansion packs. The author explains: "Planned obsolescence is, at its root, a strategy to get you to buy more... a design mechanism that would encourage additional purchases by creating the impression that a product had been improved over its early - though still perfectly functional - incarnation." He argues that expansions for MMO titles are controversial because "MMOs are service-based products [and] it is difficult to justify this double charging of the customer for development", and ends on a cautionary note: "While a full sequel... certainly merits an additional purchase, I fear that the practice of planning obsolescence into MMOs by subtly out-moding earlier releases of a given title will ultimately undermine the genre and, therefore, the industry."
I don't play MMORPGs because I dislike paying for a game that I may not play during a given month. That aside, this practice is insane. Go pick up any Blizzard game. $30 max for any one right now (check pricewatch.com if you don't believe me). Not only do you get the full game, but as much online time on their battle.net server included in the purchase cost. When I buy an expansion to a Blizzard game, I get the same deal.
If Blizzard can charge only once up front for a product with online play AND remain profitable, why do Sony and Microsoft not only charge for their products, but for a subscription as well?
(I realize there are centralization issues, but a monthly fee from 20 players (at $20/month) could easily buy a new machine to serve them for the rest of the year if they were logged in 24/7).
Bottom Line: MMORPGs cost too much for a little Skinner box you experience with other people.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I am sure that isn't what he was intending - but his annalogy can sure be built that way.
Also if you drive his arguement to where it finally ends up - why should I buy the game at all. After all - I will be paying 20 a month for the game, why kick out 50 for the game to start with. I buy cable and EVERYONE gives free installation (and many months free too sometimes). So why buy the game, give it to me free for download from your website when I give you my credit card for monthly service fees
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
This is just the problem with MMORPG's, no matter how hard you try, and unless you have absolutely no life, no job, and don't mind going a few days without a shower, there's absolutely no way you can expect to complete any MMORPG in any satisfying amount of time. In fact, they'll usually take years to complete even if you *do* spend obscene amounts of time working on it.
Then, in about ten years from now, it'll be gone. Unlike the other games on your shelf, which you can play for nostalgic purposes whenever you like, the MMORPG won't be available for you to play. At least now I can still check out my old Final Fantasy IV games, or play through again in a matter of 30 hours or so. MMORPG's don't offer that, and nobody will be saying "hey, let's check out Everquest" 10 or 20 years from now.
This is all notwithstanding that most MMORPG's are boring click-a-thons, of course. Click, watch your character go *hrf* over and over, and then watch as you gain a fraction of a percentage to advance to the next level. Yay.
Strangely, MUDs still retain their appeal for me even after these MMORPG's have emerged. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I need to fork out nothing as opposed to a bill for an MMORPG that rivals my power bill? Who knows.
On a businness model point of view MMORPG are just a wonder: develop once cash forever, as long as people continue to play.
Is a matter of fact that the occasional players can't stand a chance against the pro who spend tenth of hours a month online, so I suppose that a dramatic explosion of the number of players isn't likely to be expected, as long as people are used to also do other things in their lives.
The key of making money with MMORPG is that the customers/players pay for the service, but once the server is installed and runs in what does the service consists? I mean there's no need to be a fortune 500 to set up a machine and play with friends online more or less the way people gather to play paper & pen RPG.
Of course home brew server could difficulty manage hundreds of thousands of players (as long as distributed system are not developped), but as MMORPG player tend to buy them homes and settle down I am likely to think that in to the long run there's the tendency to play almost "locally" and to become part of a quite small community.
The games companies actually have to keep making new content for their players every month or they get bored and leave. This is primarily because players cant make their own content, and this also happens to mean that they can't make a community.
How we know is more important than what we know.
A good MMOG would use the machines of the players to distribute the load of persistence.
How would you handle cheating that way?
When trusting the client with anything but handling input/showing world, you will get a game plagued with cheaters...
With EQ(and probably others) you have stuff like ShowEQ, so you can see anything that goes on in the world - if you distributed load to the clients, the possibility of cheating would be endless...
Turning a PC into a thin client is not how to stop cheating, in fact, why don't we just use streaming video? After all, you can't trust the player's video card, they might be using a hacked driver! There are plenty of ways to maintain a consistent distributed database with assumed hostile nodes. One of them is voting. The load which is distributed amongst the nodes is done so redundantly and all nodes must be in agreement. When a disagreement occurs, each node votes for what computation was correct.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You are definitely wrong about the _fan_ made tiles and hacks since the tiles and hacks that you get in the expansions are made by Bioware. The expansions have also added prestige classes, which are not available as a fan made extension, and many new creatures, which arguably can be made by fans. The next expansion for NWN will also be including epic levels which are once again not available as a fan made hack. Perhaps you should check your information before you deride a game. I personally have very little problem with expansions for games since it reduces the overall development time and allows you to optionally update your game with new content if you want it. For instance the fact that you don't need to have the first expansion pack for NWN to install and use the second expansion pack (when it is released) is a pretty big benefit. I have the expansions for Icewind Dale and Baldur's gate as well and am quite impressed with the additional content that was provided. To me an expansion pack allows you to basically get a new game out of an old game without having to pay the price for a new game.
I very much agree with this sentiment and have argued it myself. I don't like the concept of forced upgrades. In EQ, their expansions pretty much ruin the game for you if you don't buy them, lets say you're a level 50 monk, best FD puller around, suddenly Kunark comes out and its either buy it so you can get 10 more levels to keep on top of your game or shelve your character because no one would want a level 50 monk anymore, even in the old world zones that you used to pull. Then another expansion comes out and you HAVE to buy it, then another, then another...
... well ... consider Morrowind. Morrowind is one of my favorite single player RPGs. I own the Tribunal expansion pack and I love it. The thing is, the original game I bought is still playable. My old morrowind characters weren't obsoleted by the new expansion. I didn't HAVE to buy it .. I wanted to.
The thing about non MMORPG expansions
I still own warcraft 3, and I don't have the frozen throne, and I can go play an online War3 game without the expansion with other people who don't have it if I want to. I am not crippled in any way.
Back when I played EQ I didn't WANT to buy kunark. And in fact, I didn't. So I left the game. It wasn't about a $40 (at the time) expansion pack. It was about a $40 expansion pack this year, another one the next year, and another, and another, and another, all of which were "pay up or quit" type upgrades.
DAoC:SI (Dark age of camelot: Shrouded Isles) in my opinion was a good expansion pack for a MMORPG because it didn't force me to upgrade. My wife's account didn't have SI on it for the longest time, but she could still compete in the old world with every other person weather they had bought the new expansion or not, in Realm vs. Realm combat she could hold her own ground. Sure, she couldn't make one of the new SI classes, nor could she alt-tab ( a feature "added" with SI ), but the game she bought back in October 2001 still worked.
Almost everyone who plays DAoC that I know bought SI even though it was not (in my opinion) a forced upgrade.
In my opinion MMORPG expansions should add good content without going so far as to breaking the dynamics and balance of the game. Game balancing and dynamic changes should always be free updates that retroactively apply back to the original client that the company sold. After all, the people with the original game are the ones who paid $10-$15 per month every month while the new expansion was being made. I was very glad when DAoC made the housing expansion work for the classic client and made it free. Arguably housing changed a lot of dynamics. But it was free, so it was fine. SI didn't change much. SI added new zones, new items, new places to explore, new classes, new races, and better graphics. If you wanted none of those things you could stick with classic and be just fine.
But I still believe the best way to ruin the mmorpg experience is to force people to buy new software. The guy hit the nail on the head dead on when he said, "But is this the goal, to maintain profit margins in spite of the customer, rather than because of them?"
"What this amounts to is having the customer pay for the development of the new content twice: once while it's being developed, and again when it's ready for prime time. Huh?"
And then there is the SOE model - pay before it's ready for prime time, and then pay while it's being developed. Genius!
There's a huge advertising cost that's associated with each expansion pack, which of course is (hopefully) a lot less than the sales that get generated.
But you are right about the gaming press -- they wan't new cover art, new titles, new new new new new. This is because they haven't been trained to cover "stories" like regular journalists have been -- they've been trained to generate buzz (and sometimes useful reviews) which is what the people buy their magazines for. If we wanted more "story", like what ATITD has, then the market has to see a need for that, and somebody has to create a magazine or web site that can survive based on covering evolving content, instead of the newest splashy cover art.
#man woman
segmentation fault - core dumped.