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."

Comments

Not necessarily true

[Lord_Dweomer]

""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."

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.

Player Competition.. EQ is the measuring stick

[Stray7Xi]

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.

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 /. ID make me inferior?

Re:Player Competition.. EQ is the measuring stick

[Godeke]

I'm curious why you use the terms "unhealthy" as you do. Perhaps from your perspective (or even a casual observer's perspective) player competition is unhealthy. Having coded muds for 10 years back in the day, I can safely say that our experiments with less competitive environments were total flops, and our grand experiment in competitive gaming (a full political system built on top of an existing clan codebase) was our greatest success.

Interestingly, our political system codified ranking *within a clan* (to a degree), but it simply caused the warring *between* the clans to become more fluid as people tried to accumulate the "new flavor" of power: votes. Joining a huge clan may have benefits, but moving up is near impossible, so new splinter clans were regularly formed.

So, while this might be "unhealthy" in some regard, it was the best thing we ever did for the health of the mud itself. Why complain about Everquest's similar success in player competition?

Non competitive games are cool (I have a book of them from the 70's, and they can be fun), but like many artifacts of the 70's, they have little staying power today. How many games of Earthball were played this year? People become bored without competition, as evidenced by the quick transformation of playing with an Earthball into some giant size soccer derivitive with it.