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MMOGs Only For the Hardcore?
Gamepro has an editorial up asking the question are Massive Games only for the hardcore? From the article: "Part of it has to do with the conventional pricing model. With a game demanding $15 a month, you can't afford to just casually log in a few hours on the weekend without feeling jipped. So the casual gamer's MMO has to be a game entertaining enough to pull people away from their usual games (let's face it, most MMOs are boring), and rewarding enough in a 1-2 hour timeframe so it doesn't require you to neglect your daily routines."
here is the text from the second part of the article
"duh"
There is truth in humor.
It seems difficult, possibly even impossible, to create a game where advancement does not depend upon a particular path. Put simply, it's nearly impossible to create a game where you can advance as quickily by soloing as by grouping. In World of Warcraft, you can almost do this for the first 1/3 of your levels. Almost. Eventually it becomes impossible, and you're left with the same problems other MMORPGs have--you either have to be able to devote the same amount of time to the game as your friends, or you have to constantly find new groups. New groups can be fun, but I generally prefer to play with people I know or just solo. Of course, this means soloing, but then if I wanted to solo, why would I play a MMORPG?
The sad reason is that there just aren't that many good RPG-esque games out there. I'd love to play a single-player version of WoW, particularly with an added over-arching quest.
But consider how deeply some lives of normal non-geeks have been affected by MMOGs like Everquest. The difference between MMOGs and a monthly pass at your local video arcade is that the MMOG provides for a level of social interaction that simply isn't present in normal games.
The communication aspect of the game is built directly into the game, so for many people who are not typical gamers are able to enjoy the MMOG whereas they would be turned off by something like Pac-man. So it isn't that MMOGs need hardcore players to survive. Rather it is the style of the game itself that leads players to become "hardcore players" that are online all the time.
of early ORPG's, but everyone I hear harping about WoW and Eq2 and how they get XP boosts if they don't log in for a few days, tell me that they easily catch up to their guildmates who game almost constantly. With this solution to the problem of leveling gaps, the game becomes much more social, as friends can game together more regularly.
The problem with MMOGs is that casual players cannot compete with those who dedicate a significant portion of every day to playing. Someone who plays for a couple of hours on a boring Sunday afternoon is fresh meat for seasoned veterans of a game - and there's really no way to change this other than limiting how much people can play. I'm not entirely opposed to that, either.
-agent oranje.
By ignoring Puzzle Pirates, Planetside and the rest of the casual gaming market, he's gerrymandered the online market to support the argument of his article. Bleh.
schild
editor, f13.net
(note I did not RTFA):
"With a game demanding $15 a month, you can't afford to just casually log in a few hours on the weekend without feeling jipped."
Guild Wars has the one time cost of $50, and there's no monthly fee.
And about the whole leveling up and everything, in Player vs Player in Guild Wars, it's all skill based, so having a higher level doesn't really help that much.
Winner of The Second Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.
With a game demanding $15 a month, you can't afford to just casually log in a few hours on the weekend without feeling jipped.
Was is this taken as gospel, that cost is still an issue?? I hear people say that all the time, but even if you only play 3 hours a week, that means you are paying a little over a dollar an hour, where is the big deal? i used to go to arcades and spend ALOT more then a buck an hour.
Lord people whine.....in fact, let me now rant about people whining......
I mod everyone down who says "I'll get modded down for this." I hate to disappoint.
I'd say it is to the contrary, really: most MMO'ers I know play it because it is only $15/month. After the initial purchase/download, if the game can keep their attention, they are pleased as punch because otherwise they would spend at least that much buying one game every few months.
With an MMOG, they can keep their same game going from month-to-month, without fear of starting over from scratch, for only a pittance compared to buying a new game every few weeks. And since MMOGs are tiered to release new content the higher a character's level is, and release brand new content for everyone on a regular basis, that one "golden game" can keep thousands of people for months.
Most men are not thought unwise until they speak.
This is not intended to be a flame or troll, but as constructive criticism. You might want to refrain from the term "jipped". The root word is "gyp", which comes from "gypsy". This refers to the idea that all gypsies were thieves, and not to be trusted. It has become a derogatory term similar to "jewed". I assume that you would not use the terms "chink", "spic" or "nigger" here, so you might want to consider what effect using terms such as these might have.
This is only intended to be advice, from a political perspective. If you disagree, that's fine. It's just my opinion, which may be quite flawed. ;-)
Okay we've all identified the problems that exist in MMOs with hardcore gamers vs more casual, sunday afternoon type players.
All MMOs will discriminate in favour of the hardcore gamer, so what about keeping them apart ?
Most MMOs use multiple servers, this is usually for geographic or language reasons, they may then deploy multiple servers within each region in a sort of load balancing solution.
Why not move the player's characters around so that they wind up on a server where folks tend to play as much (or as little) as they do.
Obviously the players should be aware of this before they sign up.
And note I said characters not players, we've all got some "alts" we only wheel out on odd occasions.
Everyone starts off on an entry level server, if a character is played more than, say 6 hours a week, he is graduated to the next server, more than 10 hours a week, onto a more senior server.
Obviously players should be informed their character is about to move and be informed ahead of time (game time not real time) and possibly be given the option to lock their character to a particular server, though I can that last bit could be open to abuse.
The oldtimers wouldn't be mixing with the n00bs for very long before moving on and likewise the n00bs wouldn't get pwned as much.
That's it, thoughts ?
Throw in high level raids (which implies teamwork), instanced dungeons (normally done with multiple people) and a weak economic system (crafting has almost no risk involved and costs little) and the game just feels like it tried to achieve too much all at once. At lower levels, everyone solos and theres nearly no reason to team up with others for any reason. At higher levels, everyone teams up and soloing is near impossible. Top off the fact that most players end up reaching the 'end game' content with very little cooperation with other players and you have players that simply do not know how to play their job well at all.
Many of us at the top end of the age bracket for gamers (mid-30s) have few blocks of uninterrupted time to invest in larger quests and campaigns. We're lucky to get a few solid hours on a saturday evening. Even at 2 hours/weekend it's still a bargain when compared to other entertainment, it still seems like a rip-off if the user can't use the game outside of those blocks. MMOG products can address this a number of ways:
:)
- Create longer puzzling or strategic challenges that can require thought, planning, and possibly even group discussion outside the game. (In other words, a guild could chat on IM during the day and plan out how to infiltrate an enemy compound.)
- In addition to the current adventures, make shorter ones.
- Alternative non-play interfaces into the virtual world, such as access to the chat channels, virtual in-game web-cams, real time stats, mail, auctions, etc. The trick would be to do it without the usual 3d game client, using standard desktop technologies like DHTML, Java, RSS feeds, Flash, etc. Anything that allows the user to be a part of the world without a huge time and client investment, so they can be connected at work or in the short gaps between 'real-life' tasks at home.
- Make more real-world resources accessible and standard within the game client. Provide an IM client to major protocols (AIM, ICQ, Y!, etc). Obviously nobody wants windows popping up when they're battling a 60th level tit-mouse, but careful GUI engineering can provide unobtrusive notifications and even auto-responders. Same for other real-world resources, like email clients. Point being, for those of us that do get a few hours to play, keep us there.
- Hire me.
_______
2B1ASK1
(There's also the small fact that for some reason no one wants to party with a hunter, despite the fact that if it's played well, it's a great puller and can prevent wipes).
Also, WoW's rested state helps give a boost to people who don't play as often. Hard core guys have to fight twice as many mobs basically.
Will you people please quit perpetuating the myth that you must GROUP to do anything in an MMORPG?
Interaction can include many things besides getting together with four other strangers to kill gnolls. I like the feel of a big marketplace in Ironforge or Ogrimmar. I occasionally toss a helpful nuke or heal to a younger player getting his ass handed to him by a "bat or rat". I like to play the auction house. I like the fact that if I have the time or inclination I can go help others in need, or just have a chat. There are plenty of ways to interact with the world without having to resort to pick up or guild groups.
I have a 60 hunter on the alliance side in a guild with people I enjoy and I have a 55 shaman on the horde side that I play simply for the solitude. Never once have I felt that I was playing a single player game on either character. Look at it this way, you want a cheeseburger from McDonalds, does that mean you have to go gather 4 random people to accomplish that task? Are you interacting with others in an environment (i.e. the kid taking your money, other's in the restaurant, etc.)? Then why do you people want to insist that soloing is for some freakin' hermit in a cave playing Gran Turismo 4.
So please lose the "but MMORPG means massive MULTIPLAYER" bunk because it doesn't necessarily mean what you think it does.
The actual shame in the whole MMORPG industry is that hardcore is defined by 40-80 person raids where leaders bark explicit orders and automatons press buttons at predetermined times.
"There are two million people playing World Of Warcraft - and with Guild Wars fighting WoW for the top place in the PC games chart - I'd say that the appeal of the MMO can be pretty damn non-hardcore"
To start with the nitpicking: even if they were only from the USA, 2 million players would mean less than 1% of the population. If you throw in Europe, some Asian players, Australia, the rest of America, etc, we're suddenly talking less than 1 per thousand.
So there still is plenty of room for attracting more casual players.
But in the end you provide the perfect example of why the author is right, after all. Think about it: WoW has some 5 times more players than EQ at its peak. What does WoW do differently? Catters a lot better to the non-hardcore folks, _and_ tries to reduce the difference between folks playing 16 hours a day and those playing 4 hours on weekends only.
With the XP bonus for being _offline_, it becomes a lot less of a race to squeeze in 1 extra hour a day or fall behind. If I play 6 hours a day, and you can play only 5 hours a day, chances are you won't fall as far behind as you would in some other games.
This is the exact opposite of what other games try to do. Most MMOs seem to be in a mentality that they must invent more devices to force/coax you to stay online more.
E.g., since you mention City Of Heroes, consider taskforces where if you quit before all 10 missions are over, the whole team might be screwed. Try doing the Cave Of Transcendence mission for example when one player has quit the team. You're screwed: you can't activate possibly activate all 8 obelisks at the same time, with less than 8 players.
E.g., consider COH's timed missions being _real_ time instead of game time. If you just got a mission with a 2 hour countdown, you can't quit, go to work for 8 hours, and come back to it. You do it _now_, work be damned, or find out you've failed the mission when you come back.
Fail too many of those, and you won't be able to buy some Single Origin enhancers from that contact. (Well, after level 35 it doesn't matter any more, since you can buy all SO from the shop NPCs. But if you want a Fly SO or an Endurance Regen SO at level 22, better do a lot of missions for the right NPC.)
Now I'm not saying COH is bad or anything. (Hey, it's my current addiction again. Damn right I won't say it's bad;) But I _am_ saying that its design goes even above and beyond the level grind to coax you to stay online more.
Blizzard takes the opposite approach: hey, if you can't stay online all day, it's cool with us. Here, we'll even give you _some_ xp bonus for the time you couldn't be on. Just so you won't fall too far behind and be unable to group with your friends.
So far, that seems to pay off for Blizzard. A _lot_ of people seem to be more comfortable with Blizzard's idea than with the traditional pressure to spend more and more time.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The Oxford English Dictionary seems to have a different opinion of the origin of "gypped". It says that "gyp" comes from "gippo" meaning "scullion", the French word "jupeau", and was a 19th Century term for a college servant at Cambridge or Durham universities.
It's also possible that the current meaning derives from "gyp" meaning "pain or severe discomfort", which is another 19th Century word perhaps derived from "gee-up".
They don't even mention the possibility that it has anything to do with Gypsies, nor is it flagged as offensive.
So, your opinion is about as clueless as the people who get all huffy about words like "squaw", "niggardly" or "blackboard".
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Have you even played WoW? You can solo from 1-60, with any class you want. Mage, priest, warrior, rogue, doesn't matter. Saying that you can only go for 20 levels is nothing but BS, pure and simple.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
Put simply, it's nearly impossible to create a game where you can advance as quickily by soloing as by grouping. In World of Warcraft, you can almost do this for the first 1/3 of your levels. Almost. Eventually it becomes impossible
I solo'ed 1 - 60 in world of warcraft. The only time I group was for instance runs (which I did 3 of pre-level 60). It is possible to go from 1-60 in WoW without grouping.
Of course, this means soloing, but then if I wanted to solo, why would I play a MMORPG?
To PvP. The sad reason is that there just aren't that many good RPG-esque games out there. I'd love to play a single-player version of WoW, particularly with an added over-arching quest.
I like solo'ing and PvPing in WoW, my only problem is the forced socialization in the end game. If you want to do endgame dungeons you have to make friends with the social misfits that are in the big guilds. It's not enjoyable.
I think World of Warcraft has done so well because levels 1-30 are easly accessable to the casual player. You can log in, play 2 hours and level or get some new gear. After level 40, that totally wears off and it becomes a grind/questfest like every other mmorpg. I found WoW to be very enjoyable for the first few weeks I was playing, but after a while I decided that I was putting too much time in for too little reward. I cancelled my account two days ago. Yey, back to real life. My only regret is not leveling a rogue high enough to pvp, as they seem like the best class for ganking.
Has anyone ever played Morrowind? It's basically a single player RPG, but the plot is fairly open ended and the word is roughly the size of a MMORPG. It's really fun, but it would really be something if you could play it with 2-64 other people on your server. The community based Neverwinter Nights servers somewhat serve this purpose, but they typically have to use a series of kludges to have real persistence. It would be great if a company would develop such a game. You could run a private or public server, then buy world extensions/framework upgrades as they are developed. I guess what I am describing is a commercial graphic mud.
Most people don't like partying with hunters because too many hunters are really bad at partying. They only know how to solo and end up doing things that wipe the party, when they could have gotten a different class and perhaps done the dungeon a little slower, but safer and with less chance of bad pet pulls. As a mage, I hate hunters because they seem to not know when to aggro and when to aggro. I'll just get finished casting polymorph on an extra and then the pet always seems to want to attack it instead of what we're already attacking. Don't get me wrong, you may be a very skilled hunter, but there are just too many hunters who aren't.
Can't agure with an academic source like urbandictionary.com
Frankly, I'm too easily bored by the rote style of play that MMORPGs tout. You practically need a second computer so you don't become bored.
This site purports to support freedom of speech and expression. Racism is one such freedom that everyone has a right to, though it may be one of the more unsavory freedoms.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Please pick up the courtesy cluephone: I quoted from the two definitions in the Oxford Concise OED. Go back and read what I wrote. Paragraph 1, paragraph 2. Two paragraphs, two definitions, two possible derivations.
Yes, multiple dictionaries "agree on the term" in that they agree on its definition. They don't, however, say that it has anything to do with Gypsies. I wasn't arguing that the term meant something else; I was pointing out that your claimed etymology was bogus.
UrbanDictionary takes content anyone posts, so it doesn't prove anything. I could post that "cretin" was insulting to the island of Crete and UrbanDictionary would list that information.
If you want to come up with a citation to support your assertion that gypped has something to do with Gypsies, you'll need to find one in a reputable dictionary. So far you haven't posted any, whereas I've posted the etymological info from the Concise OED, which flatly contradicts you. So, you're the one who needs to research before flaming--and learn to read before replying, too.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Of course not, talking about it marks you for getting beat up by the jocks.