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EverQuest And The Skaff Effect Explored
Thanks to the QT3 forums for pointing to a Bastion Press column discussing why EverQuest and its sequels may always be the most popular MMORPG series. The author argues that EverQuest, though not without its problems, is good at keeping up with the competition: "Sony learns from other products released into the marketplace, and they continue to watch new developments from new games and absorb the more innovative features." This is all part of what he calls 'The Skaff Effect', referencing a similar phenomenon seen in another genre: "Despite a number of very good games in the tabletop RPG marketplace, none of them have ever managed to topple D&D as the #1 game in the field. Skaff Elias (one of the guys behind the Magic revolution) hypothesized that any new game released into a marketplace dominated by one brand would only serve to drive more consumers to that brand."
Honestly IMHO that's a bunch of nonsence. EQ was the first truly 3d MMORPG which gave it it's initial huge player base. Since MMORPGs are addictive, people stick with'm. And since MMORPGs are about the MMO part, people flock to popular ones. Yes a big part of EQ's success is that it has stayed current, but if EQ was released only 2 years later, someone else would be leading the race.
:p)
BTW, FFXI is catching up fast.
(Disclaimer, I play UO... on emulated (free) servers
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
While in pure dollars, none have managed to topple D&D, many have stolen large numbers from its playerbase. In the article (yes I did RTFA) they mention that while new games coming out may be innovative, they will never steal a significant portion of EQs 500,000 playerbase. Let me give an example of why this may not necessarily hold true.
Whitewolf.
If the points made in this article were true, D&D would have absorbed the innovative features Whitewolf games have, and Whitewolf would be histroy. Yet Whitewolf has its own thriving playerbase that grows every day, in large part due to their many innovations (LARP?). There are always exceptions, and the points made in this article are most CERTAINLY not the rule.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
"any new [operating system] released into a marketplace dominated by one brand would only serve to drive more consumers to that brand."
:)
Does it hold true in this version as well? If so, it doesn't bode well for our little game of world domination, fast.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
The addictiveness of everquest (besides the social contacts) is an unhealthy amount of player competition. (players compete against players to beat X, rather then players competing against X) The hardcore players aren't playing to have fun, but because they have something to prove.
/. ID make me inferior?
A lot of the hardcore players play because they need to get to the top and stay on the top. They'll even resort to sabotaging other guilds (In everquest such as racing to kill key mobs they don't need, just so another guild can't get access to a zone). I wouldn't classify it as griefing since their goal is not to cause misery, but to remove the competition.
This is why everquest is so popular, because in the other games it's relatively easy to reach the peak. The players then realize they're only a big fish in a small pond. When a game is first released you'll see the players racing to the top in a most unhealthy manner, only to quit when they reach the top. Afterall, if you're going to try to the compensate for the size of your.. shoes, you'll want to show off where there's a large playerbase.
Furthermore Everquest is one of the only MMORPG's that doesn't rank players. This allows players to make their own arbitrary rankings to skew it whichever way they want. Most of the MMORPG's give a score (such as pvp kills) which means less dispute over who is the most L33T. "We killed super_mob_a first" "Well we killed super_mob_a with only 30 people" "Ha! but you used cheap_method_B, you're pathetic!" They can argue forever when ranks are subjective...
I stopped playing MMORPG's when I realized I was buying into that attitude that one has to compete against someone that is not their enemy. Unfortunately the MMORPG encourages this competition more then any other gaming genre.
But our whole society is based on ranking people.. does my High
I think this dynamic holds true for software as well. Embrace and extend anyone?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
[...] any new game released into a marketplace dominated by one brand would only serve to drive more consumers to that brand.
If the statement means that a new game will increase the total size of a market, I would agree (being aware that this is not universally true). The new game has to be different enough so new customer are attracted to it and buy it. And then they will try the dominating brand. To compare or for variation.
If you assume a market with a fixed or stable size (which is possible), then any new game will take customers away from the dominating brand. The quality of the new game will determine whether the customers stay with the new game or revert to the old brand.
Take the X-Box as an example. Some people who would never buy a console before bought it (increasing the market size for consoles). And surely some who were planning to buy a PS2 bought a X-Box instead (taking away PS2 customers). And it looks like the X-Box has established itself. When the next generation of consoles arrives, people will be in a different position - then they decide which system to buy on their experiences they have with their current system(s), not on the marketing that sparked their interest in consoles the fist time.
If some customers were planning to buy a X-Box and bought a PS2 instead - thus supporting the theory above - is certainly debateable.
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
Is it possible that part of Everquest's continuing success is that it was made for hardware at the time and has maintained compatibility with it going forward? Many of the newer games lock out huge numbers of consumers who just don't feel like upgrading their machines to play the latest game. There's your installed customer base if nothing else.... and of course it doesn't stop anyone from playing who has newer hardware.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I kind of exemplified the Skaff Effect in my own habits. I'd started with alternative PnPRPGs (RIFTS and a half-hearted attempt at designing my own) before moving into D I'd proudly collected the ST:TNG CCG before I realized that nobody played that and everyone was playing Magic instead.
But in terms of MMOs? I doubt it. I tried twice to get into EQ (two years ago to the day and again last year, around November) and found it tedious, anti-social, and with far too steep a learning curve. I started FFXI a month and a half ago and wouldn't dream of going back now; having progressed further than I ever did in EQ, having enjoyed the company of my fellow player FAR more than in EQ, and finding the experience more newbie-friendly than EQ. Almost everyone I've spoken to in my limited experience agrees.
It may have some merit, but to be honest I really don't think so, MMORPGs being somewhat different from other products.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
It doesn't work for P&P RPG's because they can't adopt the features. Some games use a one dice feature (IIRC Star Wars is D6 only, WhiteWolf is D10 only) should they try to adopt that to D&D.. of course not, it's counter to what it's built on.
... Waiting for someone to reply saying GURPS isn't a failure
If you keep adopting features, the game loses it integrity. In fact D&D's continued success has little to do with features, but is based completely on playerbase. If you need 4 more players to play a game, it is much easier to find 4 D&D players then to 4 people to play RIFTS. This means the D&D books have more utility, since you're more likely to play D&D and new P&P players are more likely to learn D&D.
If the article truly wanted to talk about a game thats based on using competitors ideas, the author should of brought up Steve Jackson's GURPS. There is a lot of original content, but you can play anything in GURPS (Generic Universal RolePlaying System) that there is in another system... GURPS failed because it had to much detail, you NEEDED the book to play each genre. Since each genre had it's own modified rules (think inheritence) and long tables of skills, traits etc.
List of Gurps Books
...was the planet on which the Daleks lived.
Very clever "department" subheader.
maybe people just like the idea of buying a minimal set of neccessities, then only buying more things because they are fans, instead of playing a game where the object is to buy more cards.
In dungeons and dragons, your army and pool of resources grows because you are a strong leader (or at least have cheesy lines that the DM likes). In CCGs, your army and pool of resources grows because you have managed to buy more.
Saying that D&D and M:TG is the same genre.. that's a slap in the face.
Charisma is the only good stat!! >
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Testimate Skaff's ego aside, it's basically little more than a corollary to The Network Effect. People will bring good ideas to well connected networks that initially lacked them, and can support them.
What's revolutionary or even interesting about this, I don't know. While this might not have been previously articulated for virtual worlds or communities, it's an idea old enough to have a bunch of maxims. "People know a good thing when they see it." "Immitation is the scincerest form of flattery."
"why EverQuest and its sequels may always be the most popular MMORPG series."
Because nobody thinks that Phantasy Star Online counts! Of course soon we'll also need a hand-waving arguments against Final Fantasy XI as well...
World of Warcraft. If any company has proven themselves able to deliver games of top notch quality that are easily accessible to the masses, it's Blizzard.
In this particular case World of Warcraft looks like it will not innovate particularly, but rather take bits and pieces from all MMO's to make a game that has less grind and more fun factor.
The article uses the Magic the Gathering CCG as an example. Bad example. The pokemon CCG is the most popular CCG of all time (I'm serious). While wizards (makes of MTG) do distribute this game in North America, they do not create it, and in fact I've heard that Nintendo wants to cut them out of the deal. Why does pokemon break the rules? Because it appealed to a widely different play base that was not interested in the original produce at all.
But wait, there's more.
D&D is currently in version 3.5. If you compare that to D&D 1.0, you're going to see a lot of differences. D&D continues to dominate the market because it is willing to reinvent itself completely, while retaining the brand name and tone. Everquest is doing the same thing. Everquest 2 is in development, and by all accounts it's going to be very different from a mechanical perspective. This kind of reinvention will be required for Everquest to stay ahead in the marketplace, and Sony knows it. The reason why it is required is legacy issues. As sony releases each new expansion, that makes characters more powerful, the game world becomes more and more imbalanced. The game world becomes bloated with more and more content - there is no content expiry in Everquest. The Rathe Mountains never get retired because Sony has introduced enough new places to adventure. At some point, you just have to check it all out and start fresh, or you will not have a game that will last 10 years, 20 years, or even longer.
The reason I wrote that long winded bit above is because the article never mentioned everquest 2, and how it's a key strategy, instead focusing only on expansions.
I'd also like to note that while Everquest has a huge market share, it think it's down to less than a 50% market share, which is lower than it used to be. Also keep in mind that Everquest subscription figures will always be inflated by people who buy Sony's MMO pass (which allows access to all their MMOs, I.E. play star wars galaxies and your EQ characters will not be deleted).
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Contrary to this assertion, Everquest and D&D succeed based on their design. Not their entrenched positions.
they are the easiest games in their genres to pick up, play, and put down. The rules are very simple, straightforward, and hard to get 'wrong' in the beginning.
Sure, there are tactics that make a big difference in the end games, but the gamer is given a long time to figure these things out.
Contrarily, you can much more easily screw up a Hero-system character long before you ever play. And many other games seem to use complexity as a reward in and of itself. Complexity for its own sake.
This complexity seems to be the dividing line between casual and hardcore gamers.
As we all know the more casual gamers are more numerous, so it shouldn't be a surprise that if your game design is to take D&D but remove the archetypes, change the fiction, and add a more complex combat system, you're going to wind up not doing as well. Indeed, you may actually attract people to your game, who are put off, but like the genre itself, and gravitate toward the more consumer-friendly game.
This isn't to say they're the -best- games in their genres, just to say that they are certainly not sustaining their strength from being the first arriver. Everquest quite frankly was the third commercially supported 3d massmog. but it was friendlier to the mass market consumer than UO, and M59 before it.
When a massmog design hits that is both appealing and friendly to the mass market gamer, and still provides the depth of experience the hardcore gamer requires - it will overtake everquest. It's as simple as that. The network effect has weight on pulling people -to- a game, but not keeping them.
Indeed, Everquest's primary weakness, is the number of people who have played and left. This suggests there is room for improvement in appealing to the more casual gamer.
And if you appeal to the more casual gamer, you probably won't 'kill' any other massmog out there. But your numbers will certainly dwarf theirs, and push them firmly out of the genre-leading position.
The problem currently is that everyone either tries to directly emulate the leader in a slightly different genre, or they try to make gameplay advances through complexity.
Poker, Hearts, Chess -- the most endearing and widely appealing games in western culture (the only one i know enough to speak intelligently about) have very straightforward rules that make them easy to learn. Yet they harbor a depth to gameplay that modern role playing games and massmogs seem to miss in their never-ending quest for loot and levels.
Personally i think the number 1 reason for the seperation, is the longstanding tradition that in roleplaying games (online and off) a player who has been playing longer (higher level, higher skills, whatever) is nearly infinitely more powerful than one who just began -- not because of the player's ability, but because of the resources heaped upon them.
imagine playing cards against a euchre player who got to keep every trump card he was ever dealt. you simply would never be able to win.
in the cooperative sense, he would never play with you as his partner, for your lack of trump cards would be a liability in any competition he found challenging for his hand.
also consider that the truly interesting and exciting stuff is almost always reserved for those at the high end of this power scale.
The new gamer has to trudge through a level grind of killing rats and bats to get to the point where teamwork matters, and -his- ability can be challenged.
EQs numbers primarily show that -most- people who try massmogs are not looking for the level grind, though many more hardcore gamers are more than pleased with it.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I can not take seriously an article suggesting EverQuest to be the most popular MMORPG. Has the author been living under a rock (or in USA) the last three years?
Ever heard of Lineage: Bloodpledge? 5-10 million subscribers is surely a tad more than EQ.
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But I think it's more prevalent with say, Counter-Strike than even EQ. CS has fallen far behind on many fronts in terms of design and technology, but it's far and away the most popular online game.
One big reason? You can always find a game for it. There's so many servers, it's easily the cheapest and easiest way to play an online PC FPS right now. It's surviving in part because of it's own weight.
Maybe, but it can't just be dominance alone, since Ultima Online was the only game in town for some time, and now they have been displaced. So clearly it's not enough to just be dominant for the Skaff effect to take hold. Probably it has to do with overall (absolute) popularity as well.
I have tried many other MMORPGs since playing EverQuest. (EVE Online, DAoC, FFXI, etc). I played each for at least a few weeks to a few months.
Except for EVE, it all comes to one thing: the games are all too similar. The core gameplay differences are too small and the time requirements are too great. I cannot justify spending another year leveling to reach the end game.
So I return to EQ because they keeping adding things to do at the high level end. The things that are added to EQ aren't all that different than the previous expansion(s) but at least I don't have to toil through the low level time sink again to get there.
Frankly, Verant/Sony isn't doing anything that much better than anyone else. They were just the first get get me to invest the time required.
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
Everquest is not the most popular MMORPG in the world. Let's say that the 500,000 players that it boast is in the US alone, thus, "domestic" players. There's another 2D MMORPG, called Lineage, which boasts 2 Million "domestic" players in South Korea. They are so huge that Sony signed a contract with them to distribute Everquest over their server infrastructure.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
any new game released into a marketplace dominated by one brand would only serve to drive more consumers to that brand
i wonder if that is true for operating systems as well...
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
D&D rules were really simple and for rolling the dice and playing by hand that was great. Virtually every other system I saw (Runequest, Traveller, Other Suns, Ringworld, GURPS) had combat rules and/or character creation rules far more complex.
Thus we used D&D as a core, but *heavily* modified the rules to make it playable. We virtually always used some form of "spell point" system designed to give low level casters an advantage and somewhat limit higher level casters.
D&D was (is?) great just because so much is left unsaid in the rules that you can do anything and have some odds of success. Wanna poison the Orc's water supply? I'm sure there are rules for in somewhere in GURPS, but in D&D the DM just makes something up and it's probably more fun that way.
I ran games where player character sheets were just paragraph form naratives of their lives. Sure they would have spells and/or powers and those could be as flexible or well defined as the individual wanted. I knew roughly how much power they had invested in various abilities and would actually have a "thaco" and "ac" and "hit points" for them - but they didn't need to know it. Basically we were playing D&D, but you could hardly have called in D&D by looking at us play. My favorite line was "role a die. Just tell me what you rolled, and what type of die it was." Sure, for "to hit" rolls they all rolled d20's and for initiative they all rolled d10's (no, its not in the rules, but we had rolled for initiative on d10s for so long they all just did it).
Further, the D&D system I am most familiar with AD&D version 1.0 - the one where the player's handbook has the giant red statue of the deamon on it) was just begging to be balanced. Just look at how sad the thieves are. Look at how insane the psionics are. First level mages are useless and 15th level mages are virtually gods - but it would take them something like four days of rest to restore all their spells. Monks and bards had similar problems.
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
Seriously if anyone can kick the crap out of Sony/Evercrack its going to be Bizzard. This is gonna be a good fight to watch.
I would not place much money on EQ2 being a major hit.
1) MMORPG player currently show themselves to be reluctent on switching. Even with EQ2 being out most EQ1 players will stick with thier current characters.
2) SOE needs money with the failure of planetside and SWG, they need a MMORPG. So they will push EQ2 out the door before it is ready. This causes problems with people who are searching for a new game.
3) Raph, the great designer of SWG, is now making changes to EQ2 to make it "better". This is a major worry, which should scare anyone who players theses games.