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

I don't agree

[Kethinov]

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.

BTW, FFXI is catching up fast.

(Disclaimer, I play UO... on emulated (free) servers :p)

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.

Re:Not necessarily true

[Dachannien]

It's not really fair to compare pen and paper RPGs with computer MMORPGs anyway, and here's why:

A small RPG house (like, say, Chaosium) can stay afloat with a very few products with low circulation numbers, because the development and maintenance costs for a pen-and-paper RPG are scalable (that is, if you plan on having a small audience, you don't have to hire 50 people to work on the thing - in fact, in this day and age, half a dozen could conceivably produce a nice-looking pen-and-paper RPG).

On the other hand, developing a computer game requires the creation of content as well as the program itself, and for MMOGs, content (being King, as Brad McQuaid has said) has to be extensive to keep individual people playing (regardless of the size of the audience).

While MUDs - being smaller - have managed to stay afloat throughout the MMOG revolution, they require a fraction of the people needed to create content (art, world-building, sound, and design, not to mention programming) and to maintain operations.

For MMOGs, however, all those extra people *are* required, and so in order to have a game with compelling content, you have to start with a minimum expected playerbase (to recoup development costs). Investors will want to see the game generate profits, and companies will be unwilling to devote time and resources to a game whose profit margin is less than they could get on another project.

I have no idea whether Elias is right or not. But I can tell you that EQ has made some tremendous improvements in the past year based on the successes of other games, as well as some that they came up with themselves.

Too bad that SOE's marketing department keeps getting in the way of a good product, though. But that's another story altogether. :p

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.

i'm not convinced

[truffle]

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).

Emotional/time investment

[Castaa]

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.