MMOGs Reaching For Casual Gamers

The Guardian Gamesblog has a nice bit of commentary up today discussing the push for MMOGs to connect with casual gamers. Announcements of Massive games on the next generation of consoles have been fast and furious, but skeptics seem to feel casual gamers may not make the leap. Indeed, even veteran MMOG players have difficulty with the genre, as a recent AFKGamer column on how to deal with Grind illustrates. From the Guardian article: "Still, in order to be a viable entity on a home console unit - competing directly with the likes of GTA, Super Mario and FIFA - things will have to change. Some may call it dumbing down, but the product must be created with the consumer in mind. Personally, while I consume my fair share, I'm still only primarily interested in them from an academic perspective, as resources of human sociability in online space" Update: 07/02 05:09 GMT by Z : Gamasutra's weekly question dealt with this exact issue. The opinions of industry participants are always welcome.

Comments

Freaking Grind

[cloudofstrife]

That's the thing about MMOGs: there's always going to be someone who is obsessed with the game and have better stuff than you, and because of that, they're going to do better. They're fun, but flawed, just like every other type of game.

Re:Freaking Grind

[ndansmith]

Well put. I think that "casual gamer" is the polar opposite of someone who plays an MMORPG. The great thing about Madden and Super Smash Bros. is that they game only lasts a few minutes. After that you are free to enjoy the same mindless fun again, or move on. There is very little investment. But MMORPGs, you have to invest hours and hours and hours to get a decent character, and if you do not, the game will not be as fun. So I do not expect to see a great increase in MMORPG playing among casual gamers.

Re:Freaking Grind

[cloudofstrife]

Yeah, I agree. There's another barrier into the common person getting into MMORPG's: the cost. Many of the good ones that I know of (World of Warcraft, Everquest) have monthly fees in addition to a one-time cost. I'm not going to shell out $15 a month, plus $60 to buy it initially, plus internet fees when I can go online and play Diablo II or CS and have at least as much fun.

Re:Freaking Grind

[Anonymous Coward]

The casual gamer probably doesn't give a fuck if they're pwned by super-hardcore geeks.

Re:Freaking Grind

[killtherat]

you have to invest hours and hours and hours to get a decent character

Maybe that's why some of the underling assumptions need to be re-thought. Is there a way to present a MMORPG in such a way that you can get in, and get some cool stuff done without worry about some 40 hr/week player coming along and kicking the stuffing out of you with is 'super special nuclear sword'.
Obviously a game that allows for that sort of social structure isn't going to be popular among hard core gamers that like to newbie bash or fight master wizard battles.

Re:Freaking Grind

[An Onerous Coward]

Not necessarily.

Most MMORPGs use levelling and equipment as their primary rewards. It's the sort of system where time -> better character. If the goal is to provide the best experience for the casual gamer, then it seems like it would be a good idea to break that link, or at least minimize it.

If you want to attract casual gamers, it seems like some cash bonuses are in order. For example, if you charged $1/hour up to the first twenty hours in a month, then said anything above that was free. Chances are, even a "casual gamer" is going to play for fifteen hours a month, so the financial difference isn't huge. The point is to make them feel like they're not getting too gypped by not spending their every waking hour in Azeroth.

Now, if someone is playing an hour a night, every other day, they won't last long unless you give them something interesting to do in that hour. If just about every dungeon requires a five hour grind-a-thon to complete, that's no good. Whatever the goal of a dungeon is, there should be another path to that goal which--though harder in aggregate--can be completed in 50-90 minute chunks.

Casual gamers are good for a company because they provide steady revenue, and they outnumber the fanatics by a huge number. But the fanatics are the ones who run the clans, maintain the websites, buy the tee shirts, and tell all their friends about teh aw3som3st g4m3 EVAAAR!!!1 So it seems to me that going the route I suggest could suck away the most enthusiastic portion of the fanbase.

Re:Freaking Grind

[ssimontis]

I barely have time to game during most of the year. During the school year, I have maybe an hour a week or two if I'm really lucky to play games. Normally I would go for months without touching a video game just because I had better things to do. As long as they expect me to pay anything a month, I'm going to refuse.

If I spend that $15 doing something with my friends, I'm willing to bet that I will have ten times more fun with them than I will on some game. I'm not attacking the players, I just don't think its worth the money. If I had more time, maybe I'd consider it, but I don't. Until they make a game where I can go away for three months, come back, and still expect to have just as much fun as before, they're not going to get me interested. And it will have to have no monthly fees for me.

Re:Freaking Grind

[cursion]

Anyone want to compare the grind in games that charge vs games that dont charge?

Also, what if the server owners charged by the minute/hour/whatever [online time] rather than by the month? That could be put everyone on a more level field - it might not be as attractive to those with crazy amounts of freetime, but for the rest of us it could work out better.

Re:Freaking Grind

[readin]

As a casual gamer, I didn't mind that people have better stuff; what bothered me was that I could play no role in determining what "better stuff" was. Everything interesting about the game - which combination of equipment, race, spells was best for a character - which combination of classes was best for a group - were already worked out. If I wanted to play a class I was expected to play it exactly the way someone else had figured out long ago.

I would like to see some effort put into making every character an individual. The best solution I've thought of is to provide some sort of "gift" once every few levels(in EQ the trainers would give them out). Your elf-ranger wouldn't get the same gift as every other elf-ranger, and those elf-rangers wouldn't have anyway to get that gift on their own. Some people might complain if they got a bad gift, but the sting would be reduced by the knowledge that a few levels later they might get a great gift.

When grouping with new people, you wouldn't just assume their role. You would need to talk to them, find out what abilities they have, and then decide who does what.

Early role playing games tried to introduce variety by rolling dice to get player attributes, but people would just start over with a new character if they didn't like their dice roll, so in games like EQ you get to assign the stats yourself (again, their are expectations of how you will assign them). With gifts being randomly given out every few levels, it would take long enough to get the gifts that it wouldn't make sense to keep going back and starting over.

Re:Freaking Grind

[iabervon]

It would be possible to have a MMOG that didn't focus on character advancement, or one with relatively little benefit to playing a lot during a short amount of real time, or one where there was a substantial game-wide cooperative component. Of course, MMOGs generally try to make people obsessed, because that lets them charge a lot per player and still get people. But different game balances are possible which would lead to different audiences.

For example, they could do a MMO version of GTA in which you could get cool new vehicles either by playing enough to unlock them or by just getting in when someone else gets out. You can get special items either by unlocking them, or by hanging around when obsessive people crash into buildings. They could arrange areas to only be available a certain amount of real-world time after you start playing, or gradually change things globally to keep it interesting. And they could have different gangs get bigger and smaller, and have different stuff available, based on the actions of all the players who play on a particular server combined.

Re:Freaking Grind

[Total_Wimp]

That's the thing about MMOGs: there's always going to be someone who is obsessed with the game and have better stuff than you, and because of that, they're going to do better.

There's no "grind" in Uunreal Tournament or Counter Strike. Your only indicator that you're doing better is, well, doing better. You know it's fun because you're having a good time, not because you reached 60th level.

I kind of look at it like exercise.

If you gave a group of people $10 every time they went to the gym, then after a year you'd have some people with more money than others. Note that these might be the strongest, fastest or thinnest of the group. But they might not. They might be having fun, or they might not. I see these as the MMOGers

But what if instead you just said, "go to the gym as long as it's fun to you." At the end of that time some people are going to be more fit than others and some are going to be more happy than others. These people are winners because they're fit or happy, not because they have more money (levels).

But what do casual gamers want? They just want to have a good time, either by themselves or with their friends. If MMOGs want to attract these gamers, they're going to have to find a way to focus on haveing a good time instead of getting stuff.

TW

Re:Freaking Grind

[drsquare]

No, that'd put people off playing. If you charge by the minute it's the same problem as when dial-up charged by the minute: all the time you're on you're concious of how much it's costing you. When you know the charges are adding up and you're going to get a large bill, you can't enjoy it. With a one-off cost you can play all you want and your mind's at rest.

It's not even the amount that matters. £20/month for unlimited play means you feel a lot better about staying on for a while so you can enjoy the game more, even if the hourly charge means you pay less per month. It's the psychological aspect more than the financial aspect.

As for making MMORPGs more enjoyable:

1. Make the earlier levels more enjoyable. No-one likes spending weeks doing nothing but killing rabbits over and over again. Make it something interesting. A grind is never fun, it's like being at work only with no monetary reward. Find a new idea, rather than the tired old 'find mob, kill mob, loot, and repeat'. That got stale back in the 80s. Concentrate less on the graphics and more on the gameplay. If the game's fun, exciting and psychologically rewarding enough, you won't notice how good or bad the graphics are, you'll be immersed in the game no matter what. Even text-based MUDs can have more immersion than even the most technologically advanced graphical game.

2. Find a new genre. No, you're not Tolkien. Every single game doesn't need trolls, orcs and dragons. Nor magic spells. Get some new ideas. Every other MMORPG seems to be exactly the same. It's just Diku in graphical form. The ones which stray from the genre tend to be just based on graphics with little gameplay. Eve Online for instance seems to be a game for the purpose of displaying their 'fog' technology.

3. If you're having PK make it reasonable. You don't want high players going round killing every lowbie they find, but if you have a good situation, like a war, where each side is on different sides of the map, and PK is free across the sides but restricted on the same-side, then low level players can spend their time in and around their own cities with little danger, whilst the higher levels can go and wage war against similarly-skilled players. Of course each side can invade the other side's towns now and again, so there's always that distant vague fear that keeps the game exciting.
You can restrict the frequency and effectiveness of the raids with the right balance of defensive mobs which keep out or disrupt small groups of raiders allowing the newbies to get away, but not too high so a large group can get in. In the MUD I used to play, it worked like this: you needed a relatively large group to conquer a town. Of course large groups didn't form very often because you needed a large number of players on one side, and as the game was international it didn't happen very often.

4. Make the game rewarding and exciting. Killing mobs isn't exciting unless it's the first time. PK is always exciting, especially when you're unexpectedly jumped by mobs. Make the good equipment rare enough to be worth getting, so when you loot a corpse it's satisfying. I bet a lot of people can recall that feeling when you're playing a game and suddenly you find a great piece of equipment you hardly ever get. Although it can't just load in a predictable place, you need that feeling that if you get a bit of luck it could fall into your hands, if you get the right kill in the right place. That keeps it interesting, even boring situations can turn into great situations. Of course grinding-games like Everquest with fixed-mobs and fixed-loads will never be that exciting. Equipment can't load consistently, it has to be random. That evil dragon can't load the magic potion every time, it has to be say 1 in 5. And you can't find out 'till it's dead. That's what makes it exciting.
When you gain a level, it has to mean something, even at low levels. Going from level 1 to 2, or 4 to 5 should give you something on top of the number. New exciting skills, powers,

Re:Freaking Grind

[globalar]

"time -> better character"

This seems to penetrate the entire issue. I think this is the entire problem for casual gamers. The MMORPG model is tied to accumulation, and people like gaining things - levels, items, spells, etc. It's human nature (and particularly effective for industrialized societies). But, it is not necessarily fun, just addicting. We all have addictions, but MMORPG's are not everyone's.

This accumulation model is basically just a placeholder for real content. Multiplayer games have as their content, usually, the dynamic of interacting with other people. The trick is to create content which brings players into interaction. A new town or forest is only a means of fostering dynamic interaction. It may be content for some, but the minority.

Accumulation is actually counter-productive to human interaction (and I'm a capitalist, basically). It ultimately divides the haves and have-nots. An MMORPG needs a model where the accumulation system is secondary. Where interaction is what keeps people coming. FPS's have discovered this. Only the kiddies care about the killboard in CS - everyone else just plays with guns. Sure, there are different weapons, but that is only the beginning. CS uses the limited accumulation as a pretense for entertainment, not the climax (else you would be at the climax in ~10 minutes).

Forcing people to play together will not rectify the situation. Neither will making things take longer or breaking things into smaller time-units. These will only continue the model we have today - which really doesn't seem too interesting. What these games need are new ways to interact. FPS's, every few years, take a few steps this way. The MMORPG's need to find their own way, though.

Re:Freaking Grind

[Fractal Dice]

Your premise is based on the assumption that everyone plays the same game. A MMOG is about a shared universe, not a single game experience. What if the grind of mining basic resources played like tetrus or solitaire - something that was fun on its own, even if the player ignored the rest of the game world?

Once the world and interface into is sophisticated enough, different players develop different objectives, take joy from different things and the worry about obsessive players "doing better" starts to evaporate. (well, at least as must as it does in the real world)

Re:Freaking Grind

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, you state the obvious as if it isn't, and try to explain with an analogy that, well... sucks.

Re:Freaking Grind

[AdamWeeden]

If you're having PK make it reasonable.

After playing a round of golf this weekend I realize what PKs in MMORPGs need. Handicap. Then when two players come together either the lesser of the two is given some sort of advantage to compete or the better of the two is brought down to the other ones level. This then becomes a battle of who is a better fighter, not who has the most toys/buffs/etc.

Re:Freaking Grind

[mobilebuddha]

just to comment on your assessment of eve-online. it happens to be the the only game that can support over 11000 players online in the same world simultaneously. a true massive multi player online rpg indeed.

additionally, it is the only game where there is a true ingame economy. most of the other games have vendors that will buy things from the players, to my knowledge, it is the only game where the players are the only participants in the market.

i don't play the game anymore, but when i did play the game, the #1 thing that attracted me was the economy.

Re:Freaking Grind

[EvilIdler]

Apart from step 2 (you can play trolls), drsquare here pretty
much described Dark Age of Camelot, the crack-pipe I can't put down :)

1) DAoC has new quests for the lowest levels, that both tell a
story and gives OK equipment to start with. Lots of killing, of
course, but that isn't necessarily all. Many new Catacombs quests
are also entirely peaceful, and rewards are 5-20%(!) of a level
plus occasional gear. Then there are the instances, a faster form
of grind for those who still want it.

2) The setting isn't exactly Tolkien; Norse, Irish and British
mythology clashing on the battlefield. Although you could say
Tolkien lifted liberally from the same sources ;)
Orcs are there in some of the realms, but they're minor critters
without significance.

(There are also the masterlevels in Atlantis, a different annoyance
not as fun ;)

3) The main form of PvP in DAoC is my favourite ever. It's called
Realm versus Realm. The game has three realms who are all enemies,
and the end-game is all about that. Keep/tower capture, plain
ganking, with its alternate reward system parallel to experience.
Inside each realm, players can't attack eachother, except on the
under-populated PvP server.

4) The RvR part and Trials of Atlantis' master levels give special
powers as rewards (in the first case, you buy them with points,
in the second, you progress through 10 master levels with around
10 steps of killing/puzzles each). Some rewards are pure PvE
goodness, others useful also in RvR. Many random quests around the
realms have great background stories.

5) There are only 50 levels + the middle realm rank that counts
as level 51. Mythic probably won't add more, as they've found ways
to extend characters besides that. Yet another set of skills will
be added in a forthcoming expansion, giving characters powers that
aren't strictly for their class normally (like weapon skills for
pure healers, evasion on casters and other oddness).

6) Combat is more than building up combos and hoping to win;
reactive styles are it. Special styles for position, when you
parry, evade or block, and followups to make regular combos.
Tank characters are actually more work to learn than some casters,
the latter being one-button monkeys in some situations :)

Of course, there are casters with so much utility you spend way
too much time learning to play them properly ;)

It's about a quarter to six in the morning, and I think I can
squeeze in another couple of hours of casual playing before I'm out
the door..

Re:Freaking Grind

[nametaken]

These games exist. Check out www.puzzlepirates.com

You really don't have to CARE about someone being ranked higher than you in anything. Its just always a good time.

Oh, and no nuclear swords... although there are plenty to choose from. :)

Re:Freaking Grind

[cvas]

You are right that the current MMO structure is time = better character, but exactly where is the new route you seem to think you suggested?

Charge per hour played? What will that do to change the equation? It just saves money for people who play less hours than the cut off point.

Provide alternate dungeons that can be completed in shorter time? All that means it the hardcore gamer will take the fast route and be able to complete the task even more times than the casual player.

You haven't broken any link between time and character. It may even be a link that can't be broken, not with any of the resources available today and its parallels to our "real" lives.

Why do you go into dungeon X for the 13th time? It's to get a new piece of equipment, or help a friend do the same. Now what if we break the link, what if spending more time doing the dungeon doesn't net you any gain, why would you ever go back after you had completed it once? To see the pretty graphics again? I doubt it. So now you need a new area to keep your interest. And since hardcore gamers chew through content, you either need to have new areas being added on a daily basis, or you need to say goodbye to the hardcore gamers.

And maybe that is what it will take. A company to finally say "Hardcore gamers, come play, tear through everything we have, but when you're done, don't bother bitching for new content, just leave. We don't want you here."

Unless someone can find a way to let character expansion/growth not be tied to time played.

Re:Freaking Grind

[drsquare]

But then you end up with no reward for effort and achievement, so people don't bother playing the game as much. Then you end up with a game that's just another Quake.

Re:Freaking Grind

[w3weasel]

Just what I thought when I read this

You may Start to play a MMORPG as a casual gamer, but within a very short time, either you would be a hardcore player, or you wouldnt play at all

Re:Freaking Grind

[Taladar]

That wouldn't be an RPG in the "numbers & stuff" sense but maybe an RPG in the "role play" sense would be popular with the general population.

Re:Freaking Grind

[Anonymous Coward]

You could only allow PKing among "declared" enemies. That is, no-one can kill another player unless they are members of different guilds that have started a war with each other.

You could also design a system so that if the difference between the levels of two players is too high, then the higher level one loses experience points if he kills the lower one. Then smart high-level players would only kill low-level characters if there is a strategic advantage involved.

You could also create a legal system. Then you can kill another player, but then a jury of other players will have to decide whether it was a justifiable action.

I have to admit that I don't play these games, so any of these systems could already be used.

Re:Freaking Grind

[thesandtiger]

I disagree. I'm a casual gamer, and I enjoy MMORPGS. Here's why: Because I could give a flying fuck if someone has the +3 thingamabob and I only have the +2 version.

My friends who play are usually willing to hook up a gimp like me, and, when they aren't, I find other people to go and do stuff with for a bit.

Just because I'm not in the same party fighting the same creatures doesn't mean that my friends can't still talk to me...

Now, if you're a hyper-competitive person and can't cope with the idea of people getting ahead of you because they've spent more time playing, well, yeah - then MMO's aren't for you.

Re:Freaking Grind

[j3110]

No matter what you do, there are always going to be haves and have-nots. The whole point of modern society is competition. If you aren't better than most people at something, then you're unskilled labor and will barely make ends meet.

You can fiddle with the resource that gets you the goods... IE: Reaction time -> FPS, Spare time -> MMORPGs, Intelligence -> Chess... but you can never take away competition from games. Not everyone is going to be a winner in a multiplayer game, and therefor, you aren't going to get everyone's money.

There are only a couple other options...
Some kind of happy communistic society of merit online, and we already have that. People code for fun and produce open source software.

or option B that I prefer:
A cooperative online game where everyone is on the same side fighting a relentless enemy that is constantly evolving because of development. Every so often, let the people win when you develop a new enemy.

Re:Freaking Grind

[rsheridan6]

When the game World War II Online first came out, there were no levels, no equipment other than stock equipment, no concept of a grind at all. If you were killing newbs, it was because you were a better player, not because you had a Super Vorpal Sword of Doom. At 25, at the time, I was one of the younger players. Most of these guys were in their 30s and 40s with wives and kids, and weren't about to play for 40 or more hours a week. There were other problems with the game which kept it from being more successful (mainly it was the buggiest POS in the history of gaming, with 70MB of patches required out of the box at a time when most people were still on dialup, and many many bugs and missing features). But it was a proof of concept of a non-grind MMOG for people with lives.

Re:Freaking Grind

[apoc06]

this needs to be printed out in bold and thumbtacked to the office doors of many a MMO developers door.

MMOG?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll stick with free ones, without any charges unless I want them, like Adventure Quest at batttleon.com
Paying for a game like that irritates me, as chances are that I won't like it, or I will quickly get bored due to lack of interesting aspects...

Why would..

[PsychicX]

Why would a casual gamer pay $10 a month to play a game?

That makes no sense at all.

Re:Why would..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would a casual gamer pay $10 a month to play a game?

How much money does a "casual" TV watcher spend on cable per month? Same difference.

Re:Why would..

[SydShamino]

Why would a casual movie watcher pay $8.50 to see one movie a month in the theater?

$8.50 for just two hours of entertainment makes no sense at all.

Re:Why would..

[eremitic]

People also rent video games from Blockbuster or subscribe to Game Fly-like programs. This can very easily exceed $10 in any given month. :)

Re:Why would..

[Anonymous Coward]

This argument bugs me! The difference is a cinema ticket is a one-shot. Bored -then go to cinema. Skint? Go watch TV. The fact that you have to have 10 dollars drip fed out of your account every month to play a game turns me off. I can go months without going to the cinema or go twice a week. I don't want to think - "well I didn't play that game this month, and can't next month but I may want to play it the month after so i wont quit." Bam 30 dollars down. I want to pay for a game - put it on my shelf and no I can play it today or in two years and it doesn't matter.

My friend has a cinema pass that lets him see as many films as he likes for 15 quid a month. But very few people do that. Why? - because you don't want to feel obligued to use it. People don't find that fun.

Which is why monthly fees don't feel like fun - and why I shall be purchasing a revolution.

Re:Why would..

[leonmergen]

Why would a casual gamer pay $10 a month to play a game?

As the owner of such a game, I can tell you it's easy: make sure the players can create free accounts, make them interrested and eventually addicted, and charge fees for additional features, such as in extreme cases advancing above a certain level, or perhaps removal of advertisements, extra statistics, extra means of communications within alliances, etc.

It's all about making the addiction, eventually they will want more. And hey, they play the game for HOURS and HOURS a day... what are those $10 a month worth then, on an actual hourly base ? Not really that much, compared to, for example, the movies...

Re:Why would..

[Fareq]

The casual TV watcher gets 100 channels for $40 or All The Channels for about $90.

The casual gamer gets... One game. And after every 5 months, he's spent enough keeping this game that he could have bought an entirely new game, and then he'd have two [then 3, 4, ...] instead of just one he has to keep re-buying.

Re:Why would..

[OrangeTide]

One day the "casual TV watcher" is going to say "hey, why am I paying $40 when I only watch a couple cooking shows a week?".

I think the casual gamer is already using this sort of reasoning when it comes to paying monthly feeds for games.

Although Ala Carte TV service is going to let casual viewers pay $15/mo for the 3 channels they watch. This is actually like games with monthly fees. You pay $10/month for the games you are interested in playing. (plus the $50 up front for the game, which I guess is sort of like paying an installation fee. although even my evil cable company waived the install fee).

Re:Why would..

[Squeeself]

The same reason millions of people pay $30 a month to watch satellite (or cable) television. I find it extremely interesting when people say this: I just bought a $50 game and now you're telling me I have to pay $10 a month to even use any of it??? Why is it that people don't say: I just bought a dish system and now you're telling me I have to pay $30 a month to see anything??? I've never been able to find the distinction. Both are entertainment. You're paying for a service in both. The mmog even costs less than watching your TV...Why do so many more people make this complaint over the other one? Now, you may be like me and just not *want* to shelve out money (I don't have satellite either) but that's a whole different issue. That's what marketing is for: to convince them they need it (Joe Bloe across the street believed the marketting in satellite TV...)

Re:Why would..

[bahamat]

The casual gamer gets... One game. And after every 5 months, he's spent enough keeping this game that he could have bought an entirely new game, and then he'd have two [then 3, 4, ...] instead of just one he has to keep re-buying.

That's the main reason I don't play subscription games. If they were all free to download, and I could pay a subscription to a publisher or gaming service and have the choice of 50 games to play whenever I wanted I would definitely consider that. But $10 for Warcraft, and $10 for Everquest, and $10 for Diablo, and $10 for FFXI, and this game and that game really starts to add up quickly.

In addition to that it's really no fun for a casual gamer because the games are based on aquiring items, and gaining power. There's no endless stream of mushrooms to jump on. In order to have fun there's not only a significant financial investment required, but also one of time.

You want casual gamers to play? Make it fun even if I'm only going to play for 20 minutes, make it either free to get or free to play (but don't make me pay for both) and make it so I can't be killed every 5 minutes by people who don't have a real life.

Re:Why would..

[Buran]

I'm not a casual gamer, but I don't play MMORPGs because of the endless money drain. I want to pay once, up front, and be done with it. If you want me to pay or kill my fun, I won't buy your game -- and I'm perfectly happy to play single player or use games like Diablo that don't cost extra to play online.

Re:Why would..

[Random_Goblin]

Why would a casual movie watcher pay $8.50 to see one movie a month in the theater? $8.50 for just two hours of entertainment makes no sense at all.

which is why i tend to wait a while and buy the dvd for only twice the price of a movie ticket (which i'd have to pay anyway, as i'd be going to the movies with my wife)

Re:Why would..

[AdamWeeden]

The main difference though is with something like that, if you get bored with a game you get a new game. With MMORPG you have already invested (typically) 50$ just for the game itself before your monthly fee. I could play 4 games (if I play one per week) with Gamefly or BB, with MMORPG I would only get to play 1.

Re:Why would..

[EvilIdler]

The other subscription I have, besides DAoC, is TotalGaming:
http://totalgaming.stardock.com/

Big and small games, and not a single FPS :)
(They're also working on an MMORTS)

The Grind

[LoganAvatar]

After starting to play a MMOG as a casual gamer, and finding that I had to play more and more to keep up with both my real friends and online friends, the Grinding of playing became a time-sucker and I stopped being just a "casual" gamer. That is the real catch of these games though, where they are designed so that you can progress slowly at first, and then moving up becomes not necesarilly harder, but more time consuming. I don't think that any MMOGs that design their end-game to appeal to the casual gamer will succeed. There would just not be enough to keep their player base around. Anyways, just my 2cp :)

Re:The Grind

[ReverendHoss]

One of the best content additions to Everquest 2 has been the mentoring system. By grouping with a lower level friend, and choosing to mentor them, my character and all my equipment drop down to his level. I still get experience for playing, as does he, plus a slight (5%) bonus to his experience to help catch him up. Conversely, I also don't worry about 'keeping up' with other friends who made the dash to level 50.

There are still problems with it (namely my hotkey banks pointing to spells that it won't let me cast), but I am still able to have fun with my RL friends who are new to MMORPGs, or are giving up on another one*.

[*] The other one will remain nameless to try to stave off 'Troll' and 'Flamebait' moderations. =P

Re:The Grind

[hobbesmaster]

Well, not to plug anything, but eve has a slightly different take on it. Experience is gained over time, whether you're logged in to play does not matter, each month you'll get about 1million skill points (more depending on base attributes and implants). Due to specialization and so forth, a 2million skill point player can be 90% as effective as a 30 million skill point player. Skill of the player thus takes more of an effect than the skill of the avatar in most cases.

The game has some other nifty features, like a real market, and I really like it since I don't have to login and grind 100s of MOBs to keep up with the rest of my friends. In game money is what things are based upon, and thats not as bad to deal with as skill. Just something to look at if you don't like some of the more traditional RPGs.

Re:The Grind

[Fareq]

I played EVE for a long time (well, long for me anyway -- about 15-16 months).

I enjoyed it quite a bit, but got tired of the very-unrestricted PvP...

Once you have 100 million ISK or so, you pretty much have to be out in unprotected space to make any money. And it was always the case that two properly configured players could have a 95% chance of wiping out any single player that appeared, with little you could do... got really sick of dying at gate-camps when I wasn't in the mood to PvP.

I didn't quite because I became angry at my loss, though... I simply would play less for awhile, because I suddenly had almost-nothing again... Eventually I found that I didn't log in as often, and when I couldn't be bothered to log in once a week for 5 minutes to change my skill, I knew I didn't want to play anymore. So I cancelled.

EVE is still one of the cooler ones out there, I think, but... I had problems with the PvP, and the obscene long flight-times to get places. Large world = cool until you have 87 jumps to get where you want, so that you can pick up your stuff and go 87 jumps back, praying for no-gate-camp the entire 2 1/2 hour journey.

Never gonna happen

[BuddyJesus]

Why?

• Gamers with more time than you
• Gamers with more money than you
• Companies that sell good accounts
• 
  These 3 factors will exist in any game, leading to people who are just better than you, period, defeating the fun the casual player would normally get.

Re:Never gonna happen

[MattyCobb]

Except someone being better because they invest more time will ALWAYS exist in any online game. Day of Defeat for example is free. If a casual gamer went up against some of my friends who are entirely too into that game it would be a joke. No level difference or better gear involved. Just way more time and more money (invested in their systems anyway) than the casual gamer. However casual gamers can have FUN playing and not trying to be #1 up with people who devote their life to games. I play WoW and I am by no means a hardcore gamer, but I enjoy it dispite the fact that I have run the end game content only a few times and lack a lot of the epic gear many hardcore players have. Heck, I even manage to take some of them down sometimes just on dumb luck (or their use to rolling over casual gamers one).

Re:Never gonna happen

[CaptainCarrot]

Yes, that will make for some players who are orders of magnitude more powerful than others. But MMOGs are also clearly designed with these players in mind, or at least those I've tried have been. It seems as if the majority of the maps, at least the more interesting parts of them, are designed expressly for the power gamers with few or none at all for the casual player. (Who is not the same as the novice player.) Not to mention extended campaigns requiring long hours of continuous cooperative play -- who, with a life, has time for that? I want to be able to log on, slay some bad guys, hang out with some cool people for a while, maybe for an hour or two at a time, and then go to bed. Show me a game where I can do that and maybe I'll play it.

Re:Never gonna happen

[ReverendHoss]

"defeating the fun the casual player would normally get."

I don't see why this has to be the case. There are plenty of people higher level than I am. There are plenty of people with better gear than I have. There are plenty of people with better spells than I have. I still enjoy the game, because I enjoy of what I do have.

If a game company keeps griefing by the better players down, keeps the economy on a more-or-less even keel, and doesn't scale the entire game towards the +20 Sword of Ungodly Smiting weilding titans, power gamers and casual gamers can easily have fun side by side.

Re:Never gonna happen

[fbjon]

There's one more point. I don't play MMORPGs, and I'm not sure I ever will, though I have tried a few for sure: the word 'grind' sums it up. I'd rather 'play'.

Re:Never gonna happen

[Surt]

There is no reason that MMOGs have to be designed this way, it's just currently popular with the designers.

Consider how trivial to defeat each of these:

Gamers with more time: make advancement fast, with a large dynamic range, and taper off the power growth in the 80+ hour range.

Your experience as a low time player is that you get a lot of power quickly. As a long term player you can continue building power, but things get slower. Short time players can reasonably expect to get most of the power of a long time player.

Gamers with more money: same solution above.

Companies that sell good accounts: what do you know, same solution.

It turns out to be an easy problem to solve, just no one is very interested in doing it, yet.

Re:Never gonna happen

[BuddyJesus]

I see the points you're trying to bring up, guys, but the majority of these games are based on a pay to play basis. This means that the developers must do one of two things:
1. Make the tasks in the game take a long time to carry out.
2. Constantly update the content, almost once every 2 weeks.
Unfortunately, the first option is the easiest and cheapest. Having developers constantly crank out new and completely different content almost all the time would drain most MMO's budgets.

Re:Never gonna happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Successfull MMORPGs make money hand over fist ... so it can be done. Also there is always the alternative of player provided content, ala NWN and second life.

Re:Never gonna happen

[0racle]

Except that your solution will lead the players who have reached your cap slows down leave the game when they hit it, and there goes your revenue stream. They get there quick and then go 'now what?' There's a reason that while it takes 500EXP to get to lvl2, but takes 4000 between 18 and 19, and getting those 4000 is harder then getting the 500 earlier, so that its more and more challenging. It takes longer, so your paying more if you enjoy what your doing. Remove the challenge and its less fun, and your player base goes somewhere else.

Re:Never gonna happen

[Surt]

Except what you just described is my cap, and you decried it both as forcing advanced players to leave the game and keeping them involved.

Re:Never gonna happen

[0racle]

Depends how you enforce the cap. Its it actually a cap where you get less EXP, or is it just harder to get that experience.

If its just getting experience slower as I thought you were saying, then the player base is gone. If its harder to level up because you have to fight harder stuff and the exp required between levels increases each time, (which is how I thought all MMO's worked anyway), what I described was not your cap, but Final Fantasy XI. BTW this doesn't put casual gamers on even par.

Re:Never gonna happen

[Surt]

It doesn't really matter which it is. If you were to hide the details from the player, then the experience is the same: it takes longer and longer to gain power. What really has to be done to make the experience work for everyone is to implement breadth features in the game that make it interesting to play without gaining power relative to other players.

academic perspective

[Goonface]

I'm still only primarily interested in them from an academic perspective Yeah, whatever you need to tell yourself to justify that 18 hours a day you play.

Re:academic perspective

[ratnerstar]

He also reads Playboy for the articles.

Pure Meaness

[thepropain]

Every time I've even attempted to play an MMOG, the first thing that happens is I get my ass handed to me. Is that supposed to be fun?

Re:Pure Meaness

[Dunbal]

the first thing that happens is I get my ass handed to me. Is that supposed to be fun?

I'd be surprised if it wasn't the first thing that happened to you. I mean, do you seriously expect to be the best at something the moment you start? The fun is not beating the crap out of other people (unless you get turned on by cheating at games - these types go for the instant gratification right away), the fun is actually BECOMING good. The journey is more important than getting there...

If you don't believe that then you don't want to play games, you just want the computer to let you win.

Re:Pure Meaness

[thepropain]

I agree with your point, but what I meant (and should've said) is that it's usually in the first 5-15 seconds. I known I'm not going to be instantly good at everything. I guess maybe I'm one of the people things would need to be "dumbed down" for, as I rather expect a chance to actually play the game a little before I take a bullet to the brain.

Re:Pure Meaness

[soft_guy]

you just want the computer to let you win

Yeah, that's what I want! I want a game that is moderately hard. I should start out doing OK and within 15 minutes be able to beat the computer. Then, I want to increase the difficulty level and make it slightly harder. After 10 hours I'm going to loose interest anyway.

Re:Pure Meaness

[snuf23]

Are you playing PVP games? I played City of Heroes first and now World of Warcraft. CoH is PVE (player versus environment) with only arena style consensual PVP.
WoW on a PVE server also is mostly only consensual PVP unless you go into a PVP area (i.e. an opposing factions town).
In both games I certainly didn't get creamed from the get go. CoH has a nice tutorial which gets you up on the interface and general gameplay. You start off busting heads too.
In WoW the first 10 levels are practically a tutorial. Easy quests and you get enough powers to know if you are going to enjoy the class.
Some MMOs are brutal PVP only affairs - but not all of them.

Frigging finally

[Kethinov]

MMOG's biggest collective problem is the lack of an ability to be a casual play. Virtually every MMOG I've played outside of a FPS forces you to play constantly if you're be at all successful.

Frankly, I'm just not a kid anymore. I can't spend 8 hours a day on a Wintendo playing a game. The only games I'll play today are ones that don't suck up my time and aren't Windows-only. That means I don't play many games. ;)

Re:Frigging finally

[cowscows]

Puzzle Pirates gets plugged a lot on ./, but I think it deserves it, so I'm going to talk about it again. It solves your problem to some degree, because of how the game forces group activity. A ship can only do so much without a crew, so its easy to find somewhere that you can contribute, and there's lots of different ways in which you can get involved.

The are certainly aspects of the game in which you can't really compete if you aren't a full time player. You're not going to be running a big flag and controlling islands without putting a lot of hours in constantly. But because there's different levels of group structure (Flag, Crew, Ship), there's places for pretty much every level of player.

Add to that the fact that, while there's lots of stuff to buy, and a very active economy, there aren't really items that make any one individual massively more powerful than any other. I ranged from a casual, few hours per week to a few hours per day player, depending on my schedule, and it took me almost a year to get bored with Puzzle Pirates. It's a quality game.

Re:Frigging finally

[ameoba]

You don't find people rambling about how FPSes are unfriendly to noobs and those with slow reflexes. Nobody would seriously consider making the next Final Fantasy 'accessable' to people who want action gaming and don't have the attention span to play a 40+ hour game. You don't see Hollywood putting massive explosions into romantic comedies to make them more appealing to guys. Where does this need to make MMORPGs appeal to everyon come from?

Re:Frigging finally

[AdamWeeden]

Who said anything about MMORPGs? He said MMOGs which is a genre that describes, but is not limited to MMORPGs.

Re:Frigging finally

[Kethinov]

I dig the point you're making, but it's a big exaggerated. I'm not saying MMORPGs should appeal to everyone. I'm saying they should be developed in such a way that casual gamers aren't left in the dust. Is there something wrong with that?

Re:Frigging finally

[ameoba]

What's wrong with being "left in the dust"? As long as there's content and players around, it shouldn't matter what level you're at. If the game isn't fun at level 10, it's not going to be fun at level 40. Beyond that, the hardcore guys at the level cap aren't generally going to -want- to group with some casual gamer who doesn't have skills & dedication for some massive raid.

OTOH, if you're speaking about being able to keep playing with friends that have progressed at different levels, I can understand that. EQ2 and CoH already have systems that temporarily gives players different 'virtual' levels to allow characters with wildly differing levels to effectively group together.

Re:Frigging finally

[Kethinov]

Sometimes, in some situations, there's nothing wrong with it.

Personally, when I played MMORPGs, I played for the PVP aspect of it. And when you're into PVP, if you're not an uber maxed out d00d, you simply cannot compete.

I remember a time in Ultima Online when you could start a character and finish him in a day. You'd be on the same level as everyone else and all that mattered at that point was skill. It's certainly not that way anymore; even the free servers which are dedicated to being "retro" can't quite get it right. A shame.

My Kid Loves These Things

[DanielMarkham]

Although after "Zork" I didn't see the point. He is building his own MUD MMOG in C#, porting it from older sources. So there must be something about the genre that is enduring. Just guessing, I would imagine the audience averaging around 22. And I don't understand the way the area is evolving. Sharpen up the graphics, use ray-tracing, etc, but isn't the whole point to use your imagination?
At some point, this genre, movies, and cartoons all kind of become the same thing. Maybe that's a good thing? It's definitely a new world. It will be fun to be an old guy going "Back in the day, we had to use a joy stick to move our guy around! And we didn't have holograms, either!

Spank Me, Call Me a Fool -- Microsoft buying something else?

Re:My Kid Loves These Things

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you that it's not the graphic etc that makes the game fun.
25 years ago I spent a lot of time playing Moria, which is as limited in the graphics department as you can get and still play an action games.
Recently I've tried several modern mmorgs, and the thing that strikes me the most is how little have changed. You still have to build up experience points killing monsters and collect treasure, and that is more or less it. Actually Moria was more fun to play than most new games, but unfortunately it's difficult to let go of all the pretty eyecandy, once you've gotten used to it

Grind still is a huge issue.

[Synbiosis]

Even if you're as efficient as possible, you'll still end up spending way more time than any casual gamer is willing to spend. IMHO, 'casual gamer' and 'MMOG' should never be mentioned in the same sentence.

99% of MMOG's (except Guild Wars, but it's not quite a normal MMOG, I'd say it's more like PSO) depend on subscriptions for their main profit. This leads to design decisions that would be considered horrible in any other type of game: infamous level grinds, mandatory level cap quests that require hours of killing to find some rare item, and worst of all, forced grouping (I'm looking at you, FFXI).

I quit FFXI for two of those reasons. I was looking for something to play one or two hours a night, but the combination of forced grouping (Waiting 45 minutes to an hour for a WHM was just too painful) and the level grind made it impossible to get anything useful done in less than two hours.

WoW looks like it may have resolved a lot of these issues. A lot of the 'hardcore' guys criticize it for being 'too easy' to get to high levels, but from my limited experience, it seems like the fun/grind ratio is much higher than it is for any other MMO I've played.

Re:Grind still is a huge issue.

[gardyloo]

IMHO, 'casual gamer' and 'MMOG' should never be mentioned in the same sentence.

Heh.

Re:Grind still is a huge issue.

[Synbiosis]

IMHO, 'casual gamer' and 'MMOG' should never be mentioned in the same sentence.

Heh.

D'oh. I feel like an idiot now.

Re:Grind still is a huge issue.

[Blakey Rat]

WoW kind of tried, with the rest system and some other things. But since release, every single patch has catered to hard-core players, and there is NOTHING new for casual players... I quit the game because of this very issue.

It's telling that a Blizzard dev made a forum post about adding a new "casual" raid dungeon into the game-- his idea of "casual" was 20 players and 2 hours! (Forget that it takes at least 2 hours to even gather 20 players!) In fact, I think I can trace that to the exact moment when I quit the game.

Not only is WoW putting in only hard-core features, but it hasn't added anything for smaller guilds. I like small guilds, where you can know every other person by name and have meaningful discussions with them, but when half the dungeons in WoW require 20-40 level 60 players, only the largest guilds can gather players.

Re:Grind still is a huge issue.

[Flagg0204]

Agreed. I used to play FFXI with a friend of mine. I was much more of a casula player (BLM) and he was putting in 8-10hr days 5 days a week. It got to the point where I only talked with said friend when I was in game. Otherwise I never heard a word from him. Eventually I quit FFXI (for the same reasons as you). When it takes 45 minutes just to get a group and then another 4 hours to complete a quest that is just too much time play a game.

Re:Grind still is a huge issue.

[C0rinthian]

In the MMO industry, 20 players for 2 hours *IS* casual. We can thank Everquest for that...

Planetside?

[TopSpin]

It was possible to play at least one MMOG casually. In Planetside, player skills were effectively capped after roughly 1 month (level 20 or something) at which point it came down to skill and teamwork.

It was fun and I had a blast playing the first year. Then they introduced so-called "command" skills which required lengthy accumulation of "points" eventually resulting in special "command" powers like evoking god beams from space to annihilate a few acres of players. Within a few months every non-casual player had this and satellites were going off every few seconds. Then came "mechs"; another lengthy point accumulation resulting in practically unkillable casual player eating monsters. At that point I quit.

Had Planetside not changed into a game of point accumulation I would still be playing. They could have introduced new environments (sea combat, air combat with more depth, hacking that wasn't merely watching a progress bar, buildable structures, customizable vehicles, elaborate sensor and trap systems, etc.) Instead they introduced things that stratified players into those who had 10 hours a day to play and those that didn't.

Making a causal player friendly MMOG is easy. There is basically one rule; if a player must play more than 1-2 hour every other day to stay on par with the hardcore players (in terms of "stuff") it's not going to work for casual players. The game must rely on skill and knowledge rather than accumulation of wealth and rank. End of casual player requirements.

Re:Planetside?

[Best ID Ever!]

Seems like it should be possible to create many different environments within an MMOG where only a subset of skills/experience apply. That way you could give the grinders a place to go, and casual gamers a place to go.

I'm thinking specifically of including online gambling within the MMOG for casual gamers, but I imagine you could create other environments where less skilled players could go and have fun.

Re:Planetside?

[Synn]

Yeah, Planetside was awesome until they introduced BFR(big fucking robots) which basically killed the game for a lot of players. In fact prior to then, you didn't even have to spend more than 2 hours learning the game to be competitive against someone who had played for a year or more. A level 3 grunt was just as powerful as a level 20 one was.

Sea combat, city combat, air combat, space combat could've kept that game fresh and innovative for years. They could've even added more skills to the game and raised the level cap so power gamers could expand on their skills without hurting the new guy.

I get pangs to play that game from time to time, but as soon as I think about BFRs being in the game I forget all about going back.

Re:Planetside?

[Duncan3]

You mean an expansion game? Available for only $49.95 at your local store?

Re:Planetside?

[krunk4ever]

Making a causal player friendly MMOG is easy. There is basically one rule; if a player must play more than 1-2 hour every other day to stay on par with the hardcore players (in terms of "stuff") it's not going to work for casual players. The game must rely on skill and knowledge rather than accumulation of wealth and rank. End of casual player requirements.

I totally agree with you. Many a times I've given MMOGs a try and what basically ended up happening was most of my friends would end up way stronger than me because I lack the time to play. Then it just became me trying to level up to catch up which got really boring after awhile and finally me losing interest in the game completely.

Re:Planetside?

[Anonymous Coward]

They've fixed a lot of those problems now. The BFR's got nerfed bad - they're still heavy tanks and bullet magnets, but they're not the UBER items that they once were. You can kill them relatively easily now, so you don't see as many anymore. I even went and got my BFR implant thingy and never certed them.

Also, they just added support experience, so if you place an AMS in a good spot, or do a good galaxy drop, or heal and repair others, you get a bonus off each of their kills for a certain time period, so the support person doesn't get screwed out of BEP now.

I guess you're right about the CEP, but I joined too late to notice the difference. There is talk of going to a "zone of control" rather than the "sphere of influence" system to address the issues you're talking about.

As for orbital strikes, all that has happened is people don't sit around with 10 tanks in a tiny circle anymore, or if you do, you're OS bait. It keeps people moving, keeps the game fast paced. Most OS's are used to take out an AMS, and now that support experience has been added, there are more than enough targets out there.

Consider checking it out again, I think they've made a lot of improvements. I wish Sony would at least advertise the game.

Is a casual MMORPG even possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm beginning to think it isn't. I'm sure everyone here has heard of World of Warcraft. It was supposed to be casual friendly and managed to succeed fairly well at it - for the first 35 levels or so. Some time around level 40 it reverts to the "grind XP" model and once you hit end-game, it's back to EverQuest-style raids.

The problem is that World of Warcraft is ultimately starting to alienate both hardcore gamers, who rushed through the content and are now bored, and casual gamers, who are just now starting to finish the content and are now discovering that they're getting bored too. A proper setup needs to somehow balance both casual gamers and hardcore gamers.

Final Fantasy XI had an interesting system set up originally that could have made it casual friendly and allowing hardcore to have fun too, by allowing casual players to play one job and hardcore players to play several jobs (on the same toon) thereby allowing hardcore players to get more rewards than casual - but not sufficiently more to be completely overpowering. Except FFXI made soloing impossible (no, Beastmaster doesn't count, because you have to have grouped to get it in the first place), and that concept was totally defeated when they raised the level cap from 50 and started adding end-game pseudo-raid content.

Ultimately, you have to find some way to allow both casual and hardcore players to succeed, or else both are going to get bored and leave. WoW is an interesting case-study in that - it'll be interesting to see how the next several months go as more and more casual players reach level 60.

Re:Is a casual MMORPG even possible?

[dfiguero]

Actually it's quite hard since not even the players can agree. If you browse the WoW forums you will see this is one of the most talked about subjects.

Hardcore players don't want casual players to be able to obtain high-level items even if they play the same amount over a different time spectrum. The casual player of course wants the same (or equal) rewards even if they can't commit 50+ hours per week or even go raiding.

Many things come into play here specially those that relate to "real life". I'm sure many would be hardcore players but can't due to _small_ obstacles like jobs, family, health, etc.

My guess is you will need to differenciate your MMOG wether you want to target the hc (Lineage 2) vs. the casual (?) or stay in the middle (WoW)

Re:Is a casual MMORPG even possible?

[The Analog Kid]

Blizzard is attempting to reach out to both casual and hardcore. Molten Core, Onyxia's Lair (Onyxia isn't as time consuming, but it requires group coordination), and the upcoming Blackwing's Lair are hardcore raid instances.

They are also planning on debuting raids that can be done with about 20 people in a 3 hours the most. That I find casual or atleast more casual than the hardcore instances, and once people get it to an exact science it will be far quicker.

What I like to see are soloable mini instances that maybe take an hour the most for someone to complete and have decent drops along the way.

Blizzard is also changing the way PVP works for rewards. Rewards usuabilty are now going to be usable based on the highest rank achieved, not the players current rank. It should make people not have to feel they have to PVP every single moment to maintain their rewards. However, it will still take a lot of work to move up the ranks.

I think WoW is the best MMORPG to balance both casual and hardcore elements. It's still a developing game and I think both aspects will continue to develop along.

Re:Is a casual MMORPG even possible?

[Kid_Korrupt]

I just hit lvl 53 in WOW and I have to totally disagree with you. WOW is only a grind if thats the way you wanna play. The majority of quests seem grindish at first. Collect x items or kill x monsters. But often times these take place in mini dungeons, that are fun short and enjoyable. If you are a casual player in wow the rest system almost guarantees that you will never spend much time grinding mobs. Occasionally you have to do it, but its usually very short even when your at normal rest.

WOW at its core is a hack 'n slash CRPG, just like 95% of CRPGs that have ever come out. It shares much in common with the final fantasy series. Its basically Diablo 3, but with more interesting combat. Starting at lvl 20 there is a dungeon every 5 lvls, dungeons that are interesting and in no way the grind of a typical mmorpg. I beta'd lineage for a bit, and basically my only option to lvl was sit in a forest and kill wolves for hours. whoop! When I play wow I actually enjoy exploring new areas, interacting with other players, and trying to overcome the challenges presented by the dungeons with the ppl that I am partied with.

As for whiney casual players that cant keep up with the hardcores, what do you expect? Anytime someone puts more time into something they are going to be better than you. Are these casuals playing just to be the best, or to enjoy the content? I would assume that casuals would enjoy the content more than obssessing over their next lvl like the hardcores are.

WOW has basically perfected the formula of the 1st generation mmorpgs. Until this point I have been intrigued by mmorpgs in theory but whenever i tried one, I hated it. I love WOW. I am very excited to see where other companies will take the next generation of mmorpgs. I certainly hope they've learnt some lessons from WOW.

Re:Is a casual MMORPG even possible?

[C0rinthian]

Even though it's generally accepted as such, anything requiring coordination of 20 people is NOT casual. WoW really needed more endgame 5-man instances.

From what I've read of Dungeons and Dragons Online, they are focusing on small group dungeon crawls. It could be quite interesting...

Bad for all parties

[daniel_mcl]

The MMORPG genre has become an emaciated specter of its old self in recent years due to the push to embrace a larger audience. Take a look at some of the recent "advances" in gameplay -- no player interaction, "instancing," and the ability to pay real money for game items -- and you see that in order to take in larger audiences the games are losing the competitive aspects that make them games. Simultaneously, the content has declined from the inital commitment of MUDs to roleplaying (some don't even have combat systems) to the point where the "RP" has been removed and we are left with "MMOGs," largely based on hack-and-slash treadmilling.

Broadening of audiences almost always implies dilution of content, whether in computer games, popular music, or education. For me, the only satisfying online gaming experience out there is and will probably remain to be the old-school text-based MUD.

The way to deal with the grind...

[Silverlancer]

Is to not have one. This is why I play EVE Online. Grinds suck, horribly. Leveling blows.

Re:The way to deal with the grind...

[Synn]

Is to not have one. This is why I play EVE Online. Grinds suck, horribly. Leveling blows.

LOL. Never tried mining in that game, have you?

Eve has a grind, it's just that you grind ISK and not exp.

Re:The way to deal with the grind...

[Silverlancer]

I don't grind ISK, and I don't mine, in fact I never have. So perhaps I wouldn't know. For me in EVE, money is about skill, not skill points or any crap like that--I trade, I corner markets, and I use evil little tricks to squeeze lots of money out of the economy :)

Re:The way to deal with the grind...

[RobinTucker]

Ahhhaaahhh! Your the guy who sold me that shuttle for 100 million?

typo; s/play./player.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot needs an edit post function.

Reach the Casual Player

[LordKaT]

I think that one of the steps to reaching the casual gamer is establishing a system where players don't necessarily have to load the game in order to participate. In fact, I wrote about pone idea that could help the casual gamer play the game by using the content syndication features of RSS here

Time progressed games

[Hachey]

Well, the thing about MMOG is they all progress over time - either via the gaining of levels/ranks, money or plot progression.Games that are more puzzle based would do much better in the casual gamer market. Pick up a puzzle, leave it to finish for later. Text-based MUD games were great at this. Ah, the good old days of Federation...

People don't have time to go gain Exp. for 4 hours a day; the select few who do either don't have a life or don't have a job.


--
Check out the Uncyclopedia.org :
The only wiki source for politically incorrect non-information about things like Kitten Huffing and Pong! the Movie !

Time ain't what it used to be

[Infonaut]

MMOG's biggest collective problem is the lack of an ability to be a casual play.

I have some friends who have been into MMOG's for some time and about two years ago they tried to get me into EverCrack. It seemed interesting and all, but I never got into it because I saw what happend to them. One of my friends played so many hours that when he calculated it all, he figured he'd invested one year worth of gaming over a three year span. That is, one third of his time was occupied with EQ. The other two are a couple who played EQ side by side for hours and hours and hours.

All three of these people who are in their 30s were able to devote so much of their time to EQ because they didn't have to worry about money. None of them worked a normal full time job, and none of them had kids. I took one look at their addiction and realized there was no way I could hack it, so I didn't bother with more than a cursory couple of game sessions.

I'm looking for the day when the casual gamer like me has an alternative that's better than a choice beteen time-sucking MMOGs and YAFFPS (Yet Another Fuggin' First Person Shooter). Until then it's Ace Combat for me.

Re:Time ain't what it used to be

[Kethinov]

I agree.

The thing that makes my situation ironic is that I hate FPS games, even though they're all that's available to me without too much time commitment. I played Ultima Online in my Wintendo years and it quickly went the way of Everquest. Endless time sinks. Even though you can play the game for free now, I find myself disinterested thanks to the time sinks and the lack of a non-Windows client.

Maybe someone will hear the cries of the casual gamer and write a decent crossplatform MMOG that doesn't suck people in EverCrack style. That'll be the day, eh?

Re:Time ain't what it used to be

[Anonymous Coward]

And man, oh man, what a MMOG Ace Combat would be.

Re:Time ain't what it used to be

[Infonaut]

The thing that makes my situation ironic is that I hate FPS games

I seriously thought I was the only Slashdot member who felt this way. Every time I bring up the idea that video game developers are stuck in an utterly non-creative rut (hey, how about another game where people with big guns run around and blast the shit out of things?), people jump on me as if I've called the Pope the Anti-Christ in the middle of Vatican Square.

The problem is that the industry is really very much like the movie industry now. Creativity is being stifled as the big money dictates that developers stay safe, doing the same things that have made money before. I'm not interested in FPS games, I think guns & tits games like GTA are an embarassment to humanity, and I'm not interested in spending two hours learning the intricacies of the F-117 cockpit in order to play a game for 15 minutes.

In the early days of video games, designers had to do with far fewer resources (RAM, hard drive capacity, chip speed, and development money). The results were uneven, but there was a lot more real creativity (as opposed to polish).

Re:Time ain't what it used to be

[EvilIdler]

GTA:San Andreas is tons more than just guns & tits, though.
It's actually a pretty varied game, with the story eventually
becoming optional. But first-person shooters are indeed getting
tiresome. More sneaking games, please! Thank goodness for consoles;
drop in disc, play a little, pause anytime you're like, and if
the designers were smart (like in Legend of Kay) save anytime you
feel like it.

Re:Time ain't what it used to be

[Firethorn]

I have to agree. While I like the occasional FPS, I also keep going back to some of the traditional games like solitare, mine sweeper, tetris, Mah Jongg, etc. Why? I play those when I'm trying to relax. I occasionally try the 'mystery' type games like Myst, but there's only so many mysterious puzzles I can solve. The last one I tried (out of the bargain bin), had me running back and forth to talk between three different people. I found myself wishing for some action.

In many of these MMOG games, building stuff is like a pyramid, but I think that it needs to be more like a tree. It shouldn't be you need these three sub-components to make this final part, and only that part. Make it more like you have 100 components, and can make 1000 parts. Make each stage of construction (mining, refining, building subcomponents, final component) a mini-game. Heck, have a resource market!

Re:Time ain't what it used to be

[C0rinthian]

Questionable content aside, GTA has excellent gameplay and design.

Re:Time ain't what it used to be

[Anonymous Coward]

But first-person shooters are indeed getting tiresome. More sneaking games, please!

FarCry

A first-person shooter where sneaking is not just optional, it's a valid style of play in the single-player version. Run-n-gun in FarCry is a good way to bring down more heat on your head then you can handle.

Clan Lord Caters to Casual

[Anonymous Coward]

There's one MMOG that has no level cap, has been running for 7+ years, and has an active development and player community...and seems to cater to the casual player. Mac only (though a java client is almost passable, and a windoze client is in the works).

I hear alot of talk about how casual player MMOG will never work, which appears to be a misnomer, as it is working. The graphics aren't l33t but the game play and social aspects are incredible.

http://www.deltatao.com/clanlord/index.html

Mini games for grinding items

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the grind would be more bearable, if there were mini games included with whatever tedious activity you are engaged in. I.e. making shoes in EQ, perhaps some kind of reflex game that boosted the chance of producing a higher quality item.

I also quite SWG after 1 month. Too much grinding and killing small insects and animals.

Re:Mini games for grinding items

[SnoopJeDi]

SWG was my first and last MMORPG experience. I was absolutely enthralled for about 2-3 months. I became one of those "hardcore" subscribers that played for hours and hours on end. The result of all my grinding, long hours of crafting, insane amounts of saving for factories and better medical equipment: Somebody always made better medkits than me. Somebody always had better weapons and crafting supplies than me. Playing Guild Wars almost made me want to get back into the swing of things, because it seemed like something I could pick up for an hour or two at a time, without having to get too involved. Hell, I was level 8 after only about 9 total hours of gameplay. However, even in a CORPG like GuildWars (it's not really an MMO), the same basic guidelines apply. Those who play more seem to do better. I didn't really get into the PvP side of things, but I'm sure that the people who win "the favor of the gods" in the Hero's Arena spent hours trying to get something or other to win said favor. Eh. Gimme my counterstrike and I'll be happy.

Re:Mini games for grinding items

[SScorpio]

Don't leave Guild Wars without trying out the PVP content. I hit the level cap of 20 and was nearing the end of the game. I was stuck on a hard mission and I was getting frustrated and thinking about quiting for a bit. I then created a PVP character and used some of the combos I thought up while playing the PVE side of the game.

I had a ton of fun for the next few days which let me get back to my character and get through the mission I was stuck on. I've since created two more PVE characters to unlock the skills for all of the various jobs.

As for winning the favor of the gods. That is winning 5 times in a row in the Hall of Heroes. Those are just normal people playing together. As long as you have a good combination of skills unlocked you can join them and do the same. The key to HoH is to not do a pickup party, but to join a guild and work together as a team. Using Teamspeak or Ventrilo for voicechat really helps out, and you can get free versions of both servers. But give it a try, the PVP isn't about who played the longest, it's about what type of strategy you can think to trump the other team.

Addiction

[Kaorimoch]

There is no way I am going to play a MMOG. I have enough problems getting addicted to single player games (wanting to play at work, staying home from work because I am 'sick') and I when games like Everquest get called 'Evercrack', I know I will stay away from it like the plague.

I hate subscription model games as well. I want to 'own' something, and have the ability to create a server of my own should I want to play with others.

Re:Addiction

[snuf23]

My friends and I used to refer to "Command and Crack", "Warcrack" and "Qruacke" - because even these non-MMOs can cause significant addiction.

Re:Addiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad you guys weren't creative. Because if you'd come up with creative names that post might have been funny.

Re:Addiction

[snuf23]

Too bad I wasn't trying to be funny. I was trying to state that games other than Everquest and MMOs can be addicting.
Duh.

No Character Development Option

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly enough, the way to make them appeal to the 'casual' gamer is probably to make them harder - by rewarding skill rather than time sink.

Make a game where character development is dependent on player performance, or remove character development all together.

Game play would consist of experiencing content, not leveling up or camping for gear.

Guild Wars comes pretty close to this concept - FPS type game play with the content and story lines of RPG's - though it's not a truly persistent world and lacks the immersive quality that comes from such a world.

Hardcore players are going to move through your game rather fast, but this type of game would attract more casual gamers I think... You keep the hardcore gamers via Guild War style PVP that is optional and doesn't impact the play of casual gamers.

- just MHO.

Hammer strikes nail on head

[HBI]

A _LOT_ of the people (who aren't full-time students, who appear to have loads of time to play online games) turn out to be disabled or otherwise homebound people.

This includes the unemployed, housewives, etc. A particularly strong group is the late-30s to late-40s female in an unhappy relationship. Note a common thread amongst these groups is a desire for escape from their current surroundings.

Think of the MMORPG as a very poor form of therapy. Crack for the despondent.

Play the bad guys?

[nizo]

How about a multiplayer game where you can play a traditional role (person who plays all day), or play one of the "bad guys"(play for just a short while, as often or as little as you like). Certainly even a noob would be better than the AI in some of the games out there. For example, imagine being able to play as one of the baddies in Diablo; maybe with experience you could play meaner baddies as time went on. Besides, who wouldn't love chasing down players?

Re:Play the bad guys?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a really cool idea. Make it so the baddie shows when it's piloted and unpiloted and who's doing the piloting. People could therefore acquire fearsome reputations for their prowess. "Aaaah! it's "Jim" Diablo! Run for your lives!!!!" No progression for baddies, only for heroes who have time for that sort of thing. You'd have to have area limitations and stuff, couldn't have "Jim" Diablo wandering around stomping newbies.

You'd have to implement queues. Too many people would want to be Diablo at one time, and not nearly enough would want to be an imp. Of course, this could have interesting implications if a player was really good "The Imp That WOULD NOT DIE". [Digression] I remember playing networked Jedi Knight Academy 1-on-1 against a server admin who would only let me have a lightsaber and no force powers versus him with an entire aresnal and speederbikes to boot. It was a really neat challenge, and not nearly as lopsided as you might think. Leaping into the air and skewering him off his vehicle or rolling through his "fortress" of trip mines and stabbing him in a one-shot kill was immensely satisfying after being blasted from long range repeatedly via area-effect weaapons. Towards the end, I was managing a 1:1 kill ratio, and the admin was in awe. [/Digression]

I also think drop-in baddies could be a neat way to get revenge. Player-killed by Legolas? Next time he hunts down Big D, drop in and give him a surprise.

Re:Play the bad guys?

[Anonymous Coward]

Such a thing is already here...

Be the bad guy: http://www.cityofvillains.com/
Be the good guy: http://www.cityofheroes.com/

Re:Play the bad guys?

[kesuki]

even a noob would be better than the AI

If the game's AI is that bad, a n00b is going to get dominated ^^. The thing is noobs don't know any of the keyboard shortcuts. They can't mouse very good, thier mice get full of gunk, and they have a cheap $3 oem mouse, instead of a 5-button M$ Optical mouse.

Believe you me, all I do on b.net is patrol move*, it's funny to see the n00bs try to out micro the ai ^^; while I'm busy deciding on which units to make next...

*= I still play wc3 :p, however, noobs don't know the skill points they dont know the tech trees they dont know the units etc etc... The AI's can at least cheat, and can play with botted micro skills.

Re:Play the bad guys?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everquest ran something like this for a while. The result as anyone (except for someone as fucking retarded as you and the EQ devs, I guess) could see coming a mile away was that the "monster pilots" went easy on their friends so they could get free XP.

yeah, me too

[d34thm0nk3y]

Personally, while I consume my fair share (of porn), I'm still only primarily interested in it from an academic perspective, as resources of human sexuality in online space.

How to succeed

[springbox]

The game has to be easy to learn and can have the player advance in them even if only played for short periods of time. I personally don't like to invest more than a few hours at a time if I'm playing a game. An example of one such game that can just be "picked up" and played is PSO - Not exactly massive, but it's online. No one will be able to attract casual gamers with real "serious" time gougers/wasters like Final Fantasy XI. New online games will have to be designed significantly different if they want to appeal to a wider audience (including the potential addicts.)

Grind

[phr0stbyte]

The problem with MMORPGs is a lack of a storyline like traditional RPGs. In a traditional RPG you have a desire to go further in the story as well as gather new and better items. In most MMORPGs today they give you a setting and quests, but the majority of quests have little to no effect on anything in the world, other than you gaining experience. If you want to grab the casual gamers' attention they are going to need to have a storyline that progresses at a pace the user sets, to keep them involved. Now it always just turns into one big item race, and the casual gamer is always going to be behind, and with no storyline there is really no reason to play.

WOW isn't any better

[Original Buddha]

Yeah it's really easy to get to 60. But then it's like running into a wall once you get there because the only thing to do is instances which can take hours. And that's if you can find a group. Many classes just aren't considered special enough(like priests) or you're one of 50 other hunters looking for a group.

Re:WOW isn't any better

[Dirtside]

Yeah it's really easy to get to 60. But then it's like running into a wall once you get there because the only thing to do is instances which can take hours. And that's if you can find a group. Many classes just aren't considered special enough(like priests) or you're one of 50 other hunters looking for a group.

If you think that it's like "running into a wall" once you get to level 60, the problem is you, not the game. A finitely sized group of MMOG developers can only create a finite amount of content, and even average players can consume it more than ten times faster than it can be created. That's right: every hour you spend doing a quest translates to at least ten hours of developer, programmer, and artist time to create that quest. If the game is no longer interesting now that you've gone through all the content, then stop playing. I know, it's a crazy concept.

More serious suggestions: Level up new characters of different classes. (I myself have the long, LONG-term goal of having a level 60 character of every class. 60 warlock, 40 priest, 30 warrior, 21 paladin, 10 rogue...) Play the other faction. Do trade skills you haven't done yet. Explore the nooks and crannies of every zone. Run roleplaying events. There's a lot you can do besides grind a character to 60 and then sit in Ironforge all day hoping you can get in an UBRS raid :P

Re:WOW isn't any better

[snuf23]

"If the game is no longer interesting now that you've gone through all the content, then stop playing."

Absolutely. It is however kind of difficult to just leave an MMO. It's like a breaking up a relationship or something. Especially if you have a guild of good people you play with.
When World of Warcraft came out, a lot of my City of Heroes guildies dug out for the new game. As I'm not a hardcore player I still hadn't hit level cap yet and neither had my rl friend. So we both stuck to playing with a dimished guild.
A couple months later I hit cap. We were a bit bored of the game, having seen a ton of the content already. The prospect of leveling new toons through the old mess was daunting.
But still we played for awhile.
Finally I broke down and picked up World of Warcraft when I noticed it came with a ten day trial I could give my friend.
A week and a half later we had made the decision to move to WoW and are once again having fun exploring a new MMO.
We'll probably go back for City of Villains at some point or on to other MMOs like Auto Assault in the future.
But quitting the first MMO was an odd experience. Like you don't want to say "sorry guildies thanks for the help, seeya around" even though you aren't having fun any more.

Re:WOW isn't any better

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you think that it's like "running into a wall" once you get to level 60, the problem is you, not the game. A finitely sized group of MMOG developers can only create a finite amount of content, and even average players can consume it more than ten times faster than it can be created."

Uhmmm, WoW is exactly like running into a wall when you reach 60. Once you get to 60 you run the same 5 instances (Stratholme, Scholomance, Blackrock Spire, Upper Blackrock Spire and Molten Core) over and over to get gear or deal with the hugely horrific PVP system. The PVP system is terrible because the queue times for battlegrounds are ridiculous, I don't want to login and wait three hours to actually get into the PVP I want. Furthermore, to attain the PVP rewards that are decent you have to play 5 hours or more a day and once you stop playing that much you lose your rewards.

In terms of starting a new character, most people don't want to level up another character playing the exact same content over. The quests in WoW are the type that only the most mundane person could repeat them twice or more. I mean how many times can you repeat the quest "Go kill 20 troggs".

Almost everything you've said to do at 60 is simply things that most gamers don't have interest in and this is why almost everyone who got the game at release has now left or is currently leaving the game. My entire guild of 70+ people are in the process of moving to Battlefield 2 because it doesn't eat up so much time and also because once you've completed Molten Core (in WoW) if you don't play 5 hours a day or want to start a new character there is absolutley nothing to do.

Right.

[Digital Pizza]

Personally, while I consume my fair share, I'm still only primarily interested in them from an academic perspective, as resources of human sociability in online space

I bet you only watch TV for the PBS shows, and read Playboy for the articles.

Leveling madness...

[Spy der Mann]

Yeah, I know how bad leveling can get. You get obsessed with it so much that you can't think of anything else! No, not even sex!

Example 1 (the maniac phase)
Example 2 (the depressive phase)

Uru Live.

[75th Trombone]

I didn't RTFA, so this may be redundant, but Uru Live was supposed to be an MMOG for casual gamers. Focused on an episodic storyline rather than addictive gameplay; the monthly fee would've been to keep participating in the next episode rather than to retain your built-up statistics.

Of course, Uru Live never WENT live, because Ubi wasted the money on lame commercials instead of giving CyanWorlds's 6 years of work a chance.

But I'm not bitter or anything.

Casual gaming does not require a subscription...

[(H)elix1]

You want casual gamers, then sell a game rather than a subscription. Nothing could be more of a turn off to these massive multiplayer games than shelling out 50 clams and then asking for monthly installments. I want to join in, play a game, and perhaps jump back in a few months later. Hell, there is even a couple recent threads to start up Diablo2 games with folks in the zoo. Have not touched that game in years - but I know I could install and be ready to rock and roll for a weekend of fun any time. I like to OWN games, not rent them.

Re:Casual gaming does not require a subscription..

[danikar]

This is why people keep making private servers. Then the Game Devs get all mad at people who do it. I say turn off the subscription and do what Guild Wars is doing... release a update every 6 months or so.

The problem

[Solr_Flare]

The problem is trying to balance between development costs and getting the most out of existing content. This is why "the grind" exists in one form or the other(slow progression, gating, etc).

You see, developers can not instantly produce endless wells of content. Nor can they stay in development beyond a certain period of time to build insane masses of content in advance. You have to draw a line somewhere based on development costs and development time.

A further issue that is arising is the increasing complexity of these games. As these newer games attempt to "do everything" and "look real/great" they exponentially increase the complexity to develop for them. Thjis causes it to take even longer to produce additional content and/or requires increased cost(more developers, better tools, etc).

To attempt to combat this, developers use some form of grind to milk existing content for as much as they feel is possible. Various games have also come up with varied solutions:

SWG relied for the longest time on really innovative social content to let the community come up with their own ways to occupy themselves while they dealt with the admittedly complex range of systems the game offered. SWG's fall was due to
A) Not infusing enough new content(and new social tools) into the game. Players could only do so much with what they were given. Albeit it took them a year or two to finally exhaust everything.
B) The game was too complex for the development resources allocated towards it. The game had tremendous potential but never realized it because they just were not given the staff and funding needed to cope with the vastness of the game's systems.
C) The game was pushed to release way to early, and given problem B, the result was the devs constantly having to play catchup yet constantly falling further behind.

WoW takes another approach. For that game, level progression is very easy, in fact, the grind is very limited compared to other games. What WoW relies on is the PvP aspect of the game and the overall quality of the existing content to keep players "hooked". While it doesn't have endless fountains of content, and you can go through what it does have rather swiftly, Blizzard hopes that either the PvP or compelling gameplay will either keep you playing when there is little content left, or inspire you to start over again with another character and do it again.

This strategy isn't perfect either. While it certainly has resulted in huge success and lots of people buying and playing the game. People get bored with WoW very quickly too. WoW has become "that game" that lots of people play until they beat the current content, then they go and do something else until an add-on comes along. Then they play it some more then go back to whatever else they were doing. What we have yet to see, however, is if Blizzard will be able to sustain its active subscribers or if they will eventually fall into a pattern of high subscription rates around expansions with a large lull in activity inbetween. I think, long term, the later will be what happens. WoW will still be a success, but in the end I don't think it will have the staying power Blizzard had hoped.

EQ2 takes another approach to the whole situation. EQ2 has massive content. And the game itself is highly modular allowing for new content to be added with ease. Likewise, the game was built with longetivity in mind with a powerful graphics engine, systems gear towards expansion, etc.

So, what hurts EQ2? Well, for one, reputation. Many people left EQ1 because of the grind so they tend to jump at shadows in EQ2. EQ2 definitely has the "most grind" of the three games mentioned here. But, it has tons for you to do too, plus they are actively adjusting the game in ways to attempt to eliminate or at least hide the feeling of "grind". Likewise, after the mess that SWG became, SOE has really gained a reputation as having poor customer service. While they aren't "that bad" in EQ2. T

Re:The problem

[humankind]

I think you probably hit the nail on the head. I consciously chose to not play EQ2 because of the baggage I carried from EQ. I have friends who have moved and rave about it, but I'm over it. However, you fail to recognize that if they can't make the game obnoxiously addictive, they don't make money, so EQ2 must suffer some of the same flaws that EQ had, as well as other treadmill games of that nature.

Everything that's out now won't last. They'll exploit those they can, but the killer MMOG app has yet to be developed (and the closest to it right now IMO are some of the online poker games).

I was a GM for Sony for four years. They treated us like crap and didn't listen. I know many of the higher-ups at SOE now and I wish them the best of luck. I know it's not their fault. Verant was the shit when it came to development. But they did what everyone does and they cashed out and tried to carry on. I don't have any specific disdain for Sony. I'm a shareholder. I wish them success, but I will never believe that a big corporation will crank out what people really want. Big corporations only copy or consume creativity and rarely come up with it themselves.

To something like SOE, I'm a nobody. I've been dedicating a good bit of my mental energy for 20+ years towards understanding what makes a good, playable multiplayer game, but until I embarass the big guys, they won't pay attention. And I refuse to work for $9/hour for three years before someone over there gives me the time of day. So I have no incentive to post a long diatribe on exactly what I think is wrong and how things could be improved. I still think one day a bunch of people like me will get together in a grass roots effort to create something really special that is not restricted corporate overlords or the need to become profitable in X time. There are probably lots of little guys like me, who have time and resources, but feel a bit overwhelmed in the current development climate.

And then there is the current market. The target demographic for these games makes you want to throw your development computer in the trash. I have no desire to create a system that caters to people who have the attention span of a fruit fly on crack.

The producers are off-track because their market is off-track. While this is depressing, it also gets me excited, because the next big thing will fly under the radar for awhile because today's shallow gamers wouldn't appreciate it.

Good 'ol D&D

[CrowScape]

How about this for a possible solution: let your characters continue to work when you're not online. Looking back to the good 'ol pen & paper days, there were things that your characters could do that would take months or years of time, but you didn't really roleplay in any depth. These include things like running shops, researching spells, training, etc. So why not actually make character improvement something that happens when you're off-line? You join in just to have a fun romp killing beasts or warring against another guild or teaming up to loot that dragon's horde, but when you log off you set your characters to perform a certain task that will earn you money or experience or skills. You can even throw a minimum of interactivity into it by sending e-mails to the player asking for some general input. If the hardcore players want to do everything the old fashioned way, let them, but let the casual gamers walk away from the game without getting left in the dust.

Re:Good 'ol D&D

[RobinTucker]

Eve Online does this. Skill training is what gives access to new or different modules, ships and activities. These are active when you are offline. Unfortunately, this "access" depends on you being able to purchase the equipment your skills have been trained to use - and this costs money - and money is what you get for grinding. Same thing, just a slightly more complicated version.

Even Dave Chapelle plays World of Warcraft

[kkith]

Dave Chappelle loves World of Warcraft Famed and elusive comic praises Blizzard's popular MMORPG at San Francisco nightclub appearance.

After indefinitely abandoning work on his hit Chappelle's Show, comedian Dave Chappelle absconded to South Africa to escape the fallout. Since returning to the US, he has made several unannounced appearances at Los Angeles comedy clubs, and this week played two little-publicized shows at the Punchline in San Francisco.

At his San Francisco gigs, Chappelle revealed he has also been getting away to a place farther off than Johannesburg--Azeroth, no less. Attendees to Chappelle's Tuesday night show said the comedian voiced his love of a certain popular MMORPG from Blizzard Entertainment.

"You know what I've been playing a lot of?" the comedian reportedly asked the crowd. "World of Warcraft!" When a few cheers broke out, he reportedly responded, "I knew I had some geek brothers and sisters up in here!" Chappelle also was said to have expressed his amusement seeing WoW characters with names referring to his most famous sketches, including a rogue with a name inspired by the famous "I'm Rick James, B****" sketch

Full article

Re:Even Dave Chapelle plays World of Warcraft

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dave Chappelle loves World of Warcraft Famed and elusive comic praises Blizzard's popular MMORPG at San Francisco nightclub appearance."

Since so many WoW fans keep pointing this out like Dave is some obsessed WoW player he has been asked several other times about it. He has clearly stated that he played it for a few days when he was off to get away from things and to relax. He has also made clear that he does not have an active subscription and does not plan to get one.

TrayGames...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just talked to these guys at Origins today. Looks like they have this all figured out already. www.traygames.com

Frag fer the Flag

[Sir_Eptishous]

Thats why when I get home I can kick off the shoes, mix up a Martini and relax with a casual game of TFC.
Why invest my time and energy into something I have to spend hours and hours with when I can pop into CS or TFC and frag away an hour or two.

This is much more rewarding than 'running' around huge maps to collect, build and level.

MMOGs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when they were called MMPOLRPGs. Now MMOGs? When will we call them just Ms?

Attractiveness of MMOGs

[Anonymous Coward]

As an avid gamer, albeit one who has recently deleted his game (and sold the CD it came on) for being too addictive, I can point to the one factor that attracted me to the game I used to play.

Diversity.

The game engine is called Neverwinter Nights (NWN), and the company who sells it (Bioware) doesn't run a game world.

Instead it packages a server module and a toolkit for constructing game worlds with the game. This allows you to create your own game world, and open it to the public by making your own machine act as a game server on the Internet. Game clients and game servers are available for both Microsoft Windows and Linux. As far as I know, the CDs only contain the Windows client; you have to downlowd the Linux client or server yourself.

Many people have done this, and so you get a broad spectrum of servers, each with its own 'gameworld'. There is a central server which each individual copy of the game can tap into which keeps track of which machines have registered themselves as NWN server.

Some people like Roleplaying (I did), others like player-versus-player combat, still others like to develop special skills in their characters that allow them to produce tools, weaponry supplies, etc.. Some gameworlds cater more to this, others more to that, and since there are so many of them you can usually find a gameworld that suits you. And gaming is free (apart from the initial price of the game and the cost of get online).

This flexibility combined with the possibility to 'roll your own' gameworld is something that no commercial online MMORG can give you.

Admittedly, each individual gameworld is smaller than a commercial game like say Everquest.
NWN gameworlds typicallly allow 15 and 40 players online simultaneously, depending on the hardware specification of the server, and usually have about 100-300 casual players and about 10-20 people who really spend lots of time in-game.

I read a few comments of to the effect that 'people who can devote a lot of time to the game will always do better than you'. Well, that's true, and from the tone of the comment I recognise the type of player that desperately wants to beat other players in PvP combat.

Well ... rejoice ... there are gameworlds that cater especially to that type of player, making it dead easy to create powerful characters, call yourself "Gonzo-the-Magnificent", and surpass yourself in hack-and-slash. The average player (calender) age on such gameworlds is about 14-16 ... the author of that comment should fit right in.

Other worlds are more oriented towards Roleplaying a character in the world it is in, and many of such worlds are qutie intolerant of 'grief players' who would 'hand you your ass' just because they pumped up their player character more than yours. Average age tends to be a little higher.

I found this sort of world so much fun to play in that I ended up having to delete the game from my machine to keep myself from wasting too much time online.

Massively produced for the masses

[Magnusite]

Mass produced massive online play for everyone, even the casual gamers.

Call it a McMOG!

Bullshit.

[supabeast!]

"Personally, while I consume my fair share, I'm still only primarily interested in them from an academic perspective, as resources of human sociability in online space"

Yeah, and I bet you only read playboy for the articles.

Casual player

[vanyel]

That's what broke me free of Evercrack: I just don't have the time or inclination to live in a virtual world. As a result, I couldn't stay up with any of the people I knew playing it (who were practically living there), nor did my availability line up with them. That made it impractical to group play (other than joining up with random groups, which is very hit and miss and often I'd rather just do my own thing), and the game is impossible to advance in for single users (at least casual ones). I enjoy it, but after you reach a certain point, there was just nowhere to go.

I can hear the question now, "if you want to solo, why go online?" The fact is, the environment is nice for a number of reasons: learning by watching, ask people questions, sometimes people even give you things, sometimes you do feel sociable or find a good group, sometimes you do want to play with friends.

One of the things that surprised me about it was how much like myself I actually played. I'm much more outgoing in email and usenet than in real life, but when it comes to direct interaction with immediate feedback...all of a sudden it was as hard to meet people as it is in real life. Well, not quite, but as I think about it, there's a real difference between tossing something up in the air for all to see and those interested can respond to if they want versus directing something to a specific person and being unsure of their reaction.

What they need to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

The main problem I have with MMOGs as casual gaming is the cost.

Why should I invest X dollars a month, when I don't even know if I'll get to play that month. If it were more a "use fee" rather than a set monthly fee, I'd be more interestd. .01 per minute or maybe even .10 an hour, up to a maximum of $10 - $15 a month and I'd be in. then I could play as much as I wanted, as I had the time, and not worry about throwing money away when I couldn't find the time to play.

Patience Grasshopper.

[TapeCutter]

I found that any decent game takes about an hour just to learn how it works.

Re:Patience Grasshopper.

[Dr. GeneMachine]

One hour at least. Then again, I'm probably heavily biased, playing mostly Falcon, Harpoon and EVE online. I like my hard learning curves...

Depends on the game...

[DogDude]

Actually, I've found that Kingdom of Loathing is exactly what I was looking for: a fun game that has plenty of casual gamers and hardcore players, but it honestly doesn't matter. The game is fun for everybody to play, and people *do* get sucked in, but the creators make it a priority that new players have as much fun as long time players. Of course, it may also help that the new breed of caffinated, medicated "twitch" kids aren't going to be too excited about a web-based black and white game. But more than anything, the creators work very hard to level the playing field, while the long time players still get fun goodies. The most telling aspect of the levelling is that player vs. player combat is set up so that it's unlikely that you'll get totally and completely spanked by some 9 year old that spends 12 hours a day in front of the tube.

My point is that it *can* be done. This is at least one example.

Guild Wars - not true MMOG, but minimal grind

[nufsaid]

Once I was _not_ a casual gamer. Now with one child and another on the way I have minimal time for gaming. This has scared me off "traditional" MMOG options. Guild Wars has no monthly fee so I felt I had nothing to lose by trying it. I've found it to be a lot of fun. If you want to adventure with others, you can do so, or you can take along NPC henchmen if you don't want to wait to build a complete party of real people. The game looks beautiful and has a good story line. They have worked hard to create a PvP system that rewards skill more than those who enjoy grinding. That said, I have focussed on the non-PvP aspect of the game and have little else to say about PvP.

I have gotten more value for money out of it than any game I've previously purchased.

Re:Guild Wars - not true MMOG, but minimal grind

[Anonymous Coward]

I fully agree with the poster.
GW is probably as grind-free as it's gonna get..

I'm no causal gamer, but I dont feel like paying monthly fees for games. I bought it already, why continue to pay?
So I bought GW because I knew it didnt have any monthly fees...

Level cap in GW is 20, which isn't that hard to reach. GW is mostly skill-based, meaning it's kinda like Magic: The Gathering. You select 8 skills out of the ~150 you will get in the end and play with those. Just like MTG where you pick 60 cards for your deck out of the shitload you have. If you are smart/tactical you can easily beat a higher level.
What's there to do after you reach level 20 you ask? Player vs Player fights which is a big portion of the game.. great fun since AI can never beat human ingenuity. ;)

Anyway, coming from a "hardcore gamer"... I deffo recommend it, will be worth your money.

Thank you...

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the key things that annoys me about these games is the logic that if you kill a billion low level mobs (say bunny rabbits) you become a god; In real life this just isn't the case (you become a rabbit hunter).

Here are some ideas...

Instead of having leveling being based on a linear progression tree have it based on a model more along the lines of a curve. The most obvious way to do this would be to have a XP upkeep cost so that everyone in the game averages at around level 40. So while you can have a uber-character you have to be prepared to put in the time to maintain it. Instead of hanging around the newb area and making fun of people because you just brought the best sword in the game off ebay. You would think being a hero means being heroic.

Or

Draw some kind of balance between attributes and skills. When you start a game you should be a dumb tank; being the type of character that appeals to casual gamers who haven't got the time to learn the crafting or spell casting systems that these games offer. But over time you should be forced to play a character more along the lines of Grandelf the grey or orginal trilogy Yoda - physically weak but still having the advantage of years.

Alternatively

Just have a poly-morph fest where each level is represented by a character with the goal of the game being to work your way up into better and better characters, So you might start the game as generic goblin number 1 and finish the game as Frodo or Sam. Based on a story that is cycled on the server.

I seriously think that appealing to causal gamers is not as hard a most the the previous posters are making out. I've just pulled out of my arse three ideas, I feel, would get the balance right between the bedroom brigrade who just what to compulsively level and people who just what to either be social or explore the games content - and I'm not that intelligent a bloke, or even a professional.

It's great that the people who design these things are (finally) starting to realise they have to stop treating their player base like lab rats.

time

[Rinisari]

MMOGs will not capture the true casual gamer until monthly fees are replaced with hourly fees. A casual gamer is not going to pay $15/mo for an MMOG which that may not play for more than 10 hours in that month. If SOE or Blizzard were to adopt, say a $0.25/hr rate, casual gamers would be much more likely to play since they can play and pay at their own pace.

Guild Wars

[Castaa]

IMO, Guild Wars is a good attempt at a "casual gamers" massively multiplayer online game.

Here are some of my experiences from playing Guild Wars:

• There is very little if any tedious travel from place to place. The player can simply click on the map to travel to any city (once that city has been discovered).
• The game's level progression is more designed around accomplishing quests and team based missions and not killing creatures purely for experience sake.
• A player can group up with AI controlled characters to do quests if there is no one to group with at any give time. Generally it is better to group with real life players but AI characters do a good job filling in where no human player can be found. This can cut down on a lot of wasted time looking for certain classes to fill out a balanced group.
• The quest system is designed to keep a player moving through the world of the game naturally. Almost always a quest entails a player to travel to the next city where there is almost always new quests or missions to do. One is never left wondering what to do or where to go next
• The map also clearly marks where to adventure to for a given quest. This cuts down on a lot of wandering and wasting time. Another interesting aspect of the map is that players in your adventure party can draw with their mouse on the map that is shown to other players. This allows tactics and directions to be given to everyone in a clear and simultaneous manner.
• And arguably most importantly, there are no monthly subscription costs. A player can take all the time they want progressing through the game. There is no feeling of pressure due to mounting subscription costs. If a player needs to take two months off from the game, they can come back at no cost to them and pick up where they left off.

All in all, I'd recommend Guild Wars to anyone curious about MMOGs but were afraid of the time sink and complexity of them.

Re:Guild Wars

[davew2040]

Unfortunately, Guild Wars is no more an MMORPG than Diablo 2.

Re:Guild Wars

[glsunder]

You left out one of the big ones for parents -- since everything is instanced, you can back up a little ways and your game is essentially paused. Games like WoW or DAoC dont have that ability and arent really a good option for people who often have to stop playing suddenly.

Shenmue

[rinkjustice]

The truth is, the further in you get, the more time you've got to spend doing pointless tasks in order to increase your "experience", which then allows you to access another fraction of virtual acreage. In the same way that I lost interest in the Dreamcast game Shenmue when I was forced to get a job shifting virtual boxes around a virtual dockyard for hours of real-time

He's using Shenmue, of all games, to illustrate this point? Shenmue was bloody brilliant. Nothing was a grind, and I don't recall having to work at the docks for "hours" as he states. And even if he did, Shenmue is nothing like WoW, Evercrack and Final Fantasy. It's a different animal - top of the food chain I might add.

My experience with MMOGs

[humankind]

* CDC PLATO - Empire, Drygulch... to date to me seem to be the most fun MMOGs I ever played and are credited with getting me into computers.

* BBS Stuff/MUDs - fun here and there, the turn-based stuff typically ended up being a lot more fun because it didn't suck the tremendous time later games did, but it died a long time ago.

* Sierra Network, Neverwinter Nights (on AOL), STC and early proprietary networks were always stunted by the technology and were unable to deliver immersive worlds worthy of loyalty.

Then came the Internet...

* Early net systems like Active Worlds, (something) 23/21 (I can't even remember the name so you can imagine how influential these were) These systems were plagued with many of the issues the early non-net-based games had. Boooring.

* Ultima Online - required a tremendous stretch of the imagination to buy into IMO - the whole perspective thing was lame in comparison to the new stuff on the horizon, and the uncontrolled PVP and general user-unfriendliness of the game made it profoundly unappealing

* Evercrack - ate years of my life, was lots of fun, met many nice friends, but who knows if I may have cured cancer or learned to play guitar better than SRV had I not been wasting my time for so long, and have virtually nothing to show for it.

* Duke Nukem, Doom, Unreal Tournament, etc. - Made me realize that I totally sucked, as I was continually fragged by a bunch of 12-year-olds with no command of the English language, served to seed my resentment towards power gamers (which I thought I *used* to be, but I was *wrong*)

* Star Wars Galaxies - I really was excited about this game prior to getting into it, visually it's striking, but the game just didn't work, as advanced as it was, it was way to easy to hit a brick wall and ask yourself "WTF am I doing?", took a break, came back a year later, played for a few months and realized the same thing... not sure why this game isn't working but it is NOT working... beginning to suspect the problem is basing this upon Lucas' guidelines and being trapped in a world that is now a corporate entity exploiting baby boomers and early gen-X'ers, haphazardly created to sell breakfast cereal, action figures, pez dispensers and M&Ms.

* Sims - I pat myself on the back for being smart enough to not even get into this waste of space. What's the point of creating an online personna that's even more pathetic than your real life one?

* Puzzle Pirates - thought maybe I could get into this as a breath of fresh air from the soul-sucking MMORPGs that require you to spend half your life eating glass before you feel good about your online personna, but nope, this game is the same thing. It's most substantive flaw is that someone thought it would be a good idea to write the entire application in JAVA, so as a result, it's 100 times slower than its contemporaries - smooth move! Yea, you can goof off more easily solo but ultimately this game continually prompts you to jump on the hamster wheel so you can put some purple jumpsuit on your avatar and impress other online losers. No game has made me more aware of how pathetic I am, when I'm pretending to be a jolly pirate pillaging via tetris-esque gameplay and dreaming of a pixelated octopuss to wear around my neck. Someone kill me please.

* Pokerstars - About the only game you can casually jump into at any time, and play. I don't espouse to be seeded into some goofball WPT event, but enjoy that I'm probably smarter than 90% of the dummies that play the game dreaming of winning big. Ironically, it's an ancient (by today's standards) game that ends up being one of the most playable and long-lived online.

What does the future hold? One thing is for sure... the big companies doing stuff now don't have a freakin' clue. Just once I'd like an audience with some developers who would listen, but nobody listens anymore, so it doesn't matter what I think.

Painful memories.

[vhold]

I was a pretty active planetside player for around a year on Markov... That game's development was just one massive mistake after another.

Everything was going great in beta, but the downhill started one -day 1- of the game's release. They made a massive and totally untested change, even the manual described the way the game was in beta.

In beta, you got -full- XP for every kill anybody in your squad made. On release day 1, they divided it by the number of players. On average, if you were used to 10 man squads, you got 1/10th the XP you were used to, drawing out the level up period by a factor of 10.

But that wasn't the only effect, there was a massive unintended consequence. You could still get pretty good XP if you sat inside of the Spheres of Influence while capturing bases.

Result: everybody and their mom was stuffing themselves into these spheres of influence constantly. They made up maybe 10% of the overall landmass and were very repetitive and uninteresting locations. There were only a few base designs and everything became focused on the rather weak indoor combat as opposed to the much more epic and cool outdoor vehicle combat.

The massive outdoor battles of the beta were gone and replaced by overcrowded lag fests that started crashing servers. Same number of players as beta, but because they pushed player density way up with this totally untested change, network traffic and server load increased exponentially since it normally didn't have to transmit the locations of players to so many people since they were more spread out.

The devs turned an absolute blind eye to how they had ruined the game and populations dropped by what seemed like 75% in the first month as people chose not to subscribe because the game was pretty much unplayable during prime time. Continents were crashing so often that the sanctuary continent you'd get kicked to when they crashed, would crash, and you couldn't login at all.

There were -more- people in the free public beta and it was very stable towards the end, how in the world were the devs so dense as to not to see what their change had done?

Today games are beautyful but dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

All we have today is massive visual games, with awesome scenarios, movements and all kinda of stuff. But gameplay, story sux. Way too boring. We don't have games like we had in the past -- 10 years ago.

Why LucasArt went down? Because they lost hardware attention. They got story and gameplay to keep one playing for hours, days, months (who could forget Monkey Island series? Sam & Max? Full Throttle? The Dig? The original Star Wars series?), but they got simple graphics, allowed to low end machines to be used.

Then came the 3D era, and all we have are boring games with awesome looking. But boring. Take a simple look at HL2. They promised an awesome game. They lost its game in middle of development stage. They got world attention to them. They launched game one year after they planned. Game was fun. For one or two weeks.

Doom3, no fun at all. A crappy, bummer game with dark corridors and a lot of monsters, and a freakin' laggy game?! There is nothing to look in Doom3 except dark corridors to make that game be so laggy. How long it survived? No much longer than HL2.

That's why GTA is a must -- and banned by some dumb lawers who think they understand what IS GTA about. Game is simple, game is good, game has a story.

And that's our actual game devel. They do their best in visual elements, but put aside a simple item: story. But, oh well, that's "the way it means to be played"...

Lets talk casual gamers...

[Xugumad]

Everyone seems to be saying that the reason MMOGs don't suit casual gamers, is the grind, so the content lasts long enough.

Huh?

If they're casual gamers, there should be no need for the grind to slow them down. It took me almost a year to get to level 50 in CoH. I've been playing Guild Wars since launch, and still haven't run out of PvE content. The key point about casual gamers is that they play, y'know, casually.

Sure, the regular MMOGers will turn up, play the entire content in 3 hours, and go do something else. Does that matter, if you've got casual gamers in their place?

De Nile

[illest503]

...is not just a river in egypt:

"Personally, while I consume my fair share, I'm still only primarily interested in them from an academic perspective, as resources of human sociability in online space"

Sure buddy...just like how I'm not a cocaine user--I'm just really obsessed with the way it smells. In fact, it's so subtle that it's hard to smell unless you smell it through a straw. And I keep forgetting how it smells and needing to refresh my memory...for days on end.

If it wasn't for UO....

[Original Buddha]

Games like Everquest wouldn't have even gone into development. There wasn't anything on the horizon when it was released reguardless of what you think.

Re:If it wasn't for UO....

[humankind]

Games like Everquest wouldn't have even gone into development. There wasn't anything on the horizon when it was released reguardless of what you think.

Dream on.

EQ was the child of MUDs, not UO, which is why it came out of the box and kicked UO's ass up and down the street.

If UO never existed, it would have had little or no effect on EQ. The only thing UO may have taught EQ is that PVP sucks.

Subscription is the problem

[dogles]

Current MMO's are not tedious because they're massively-multiplayer; it's because of the business model. You have to keep players paying. This means an (ideally) endless stretch of advancement.

I think the subscription model is going to continue to be a barrier to entry for casual gamers. "Casual" implies a small time investment. Why would I pay $15/mo for something I play for a couple hours on the weekend? Especially if those two hours are stuck in a repetitive grind?

Right now the "MM" part of MMORPG isn't really being taken advantage of in current games. A game like Battlefield 2 rewards a comparable level of group coordination to an EQ raid. Truly massive group coordination (100+) is rare. The "MM" part has not truly been delivered yet, imo.

The real thing being exploited, what MMO designers spend all their time on, is how to keep players paying for as many months as possible.

A better acronym would be "S-RPG", for subscription-based RPG. I think an MMO for casual gamers would require a dramatically different approach. "Dumbing-down" the existing genre might bring in (and hook) newcomers, but only the hardcore will stay.

Re:Subscription is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, I've pissed away my time on some pretty boring Diku Muds in my time and they're free. And considering the money most people spend on mobile bills, food that is never eaten, gift vouchers that are never cashed etc - what these games charge ($15) isn't that much. Obviously, the industry whats casual players because they contribute the same (paying the same bills) while costing them the least (server load).

Sorry but you're argument reads like a cope out IMHO. Like you're putting down to economics what is really psycological. Why to people spend money to see movies that suck?
Drive cars when they should walk?
Buy wide-screen televisions for reality TV?

Although I agree with the S-RPG bit.

Re:Subscription is the problem

[dogles]

All I'm saying is that there are much better outlets for casual gamers, at much better price points. If all I'm looking for is a couple hours of gaming fun, "God of War" beats any MMO hands-down. An MMO takes a lot more time investment to get anything out of it. That's a barrier to entry for casual gamers, who by definition don't want to make a large time investment.

There's a big difference between wanting to attract casual gamers and wanting to *convert* casual gamers. Maybe MMO's will continue to be successful with the latter, maybe not. But I don't think they have been or will be successful with the former.

Re:Subscription is the problem

[NateE]

Your making a lot of sense dogles.

Add up the cost of a good PC. A good graphics card. The monthly cost of broadband. The monthly cost of the MMORPG.

Every 2 years figure you'll probably have to upgrade the PC.

This is why casual gamers go for a console.

Fuck 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a game with decent AI, intelligent level design, and/or an immersive story.

I have to account for all the things people do by trade. I don't want to do this for entertainment.

MOD UP ^^^

[Fastball]

Does not necessarily need to be bad guy roles. Just minor roles custom made for casual gamers. Better AI, more depth to a story, different perspectives of the same game. Lots to like there. Good idea, man.

Re:MOD UP ^^^

[AdamWeeden]

Yeah maybe farm out the roles normally filled by NPCs to casual gamers.

Subspace/Continuum

[biff-mo]

Subspace/Continuum fits the 'MMOG for the casual player' bill perfectly.

I pick it up whenever I have 10 minutes.

Check it out....

Re:Subspace/Continuum

[NateE]

Wow, do I remember having so much fun with Subspace.

Too bad there is such a limited market for 2D space games.

Totally, I forget to play free ones

[EtherAlchemist]

I've been playing iClod City or whatever (does that even qualify?) which is turn based, but free, and often go days forgetting I was even playing.

By the time I com back, it's difficult to remember what I was doing or what I had planned to do next.

I dunno, to me sounds kinda like companies are getting desperate to find an audience.

Maybe the reason is cost, even at 10 bucks a month, if you're playing 5 or 6 of them, that's (duh) 50 or 60 dollars just for online gaming. Coupled with the prices of console and PC games, gamers quickly have to decide what to play. Maybe fix the problem with dedicated players and then solve the problem of MMOGS for the casual user.

MMO for All

[TomRC]

0) Provide fun things to do, ideally with a weekly, evolving story that keeps people coming back, that they can take part in. Let them shape the story a little bit by their actions, even if it's just "story path A vs path B".

1) No Leveling. Create a character, play that character til you're bored with them - they don't continuously "improve". Let people have fun WITHOUT the Grind. Or make character improvement rare, unique, totally unpredictable, earned when a special opportunity came up (but you don't know it's one of those until you complete the quest) - so the 200 hour player has maybe 4 interesting improvements over the newbie.

3) Tightly limit item slots to keep it simple. E.g one melee weapon, one ranged. Want a new one? Toss the old one. Or do upgrades and repairs (weapon and armor damage to spend money on, but you can always dump it and pick up free basic equipment if it gets TOO bad).

4) Sign up once for all MMO games (to set up credit card info, account $$ limits, etc). Eliminate this barrier to getting into a new game, so you can rent a game and try it out. In the long run, this helps all game developers. Forget trying to "lock in" players - that just keeps them from coming back once they switch.

5) Charge on a "run a tab" basis - play until you've run up a certain $$ tab - high enough to get new MMO players hooked before the bill comes due. If they quit forever, bill them after one year.

6) Give'm a taste. Once you've signed up for MMO access, you can create a character and play any game 30 minutes for free. Good for rental games you may or may not like.

7) Make it trivial to chat - as in just talking into a microphone and hearing what others are saying/yelling/screaming nearby. No keyboard, usually no button presses - continuous voice. Charge people if they want to talk, but let them listen for free. Anyone who doesn't want to pay can trigger stock phrases, maybe a personal digitized "battle cry", etc.

8) Offer multiple worlds "right sized" and "right feel" for different players. Some like lots of company, some like nearly empty worlds. Hardcore or nerfed or smurfed. Etc.

9) Provide two tracks - casual and heavy player. Casual players can buy or rent the basic game, and play forever, whenever. Heavy players get on the 'fresh content' upgrade disc track, paying modest amounts for the most recent releases. Separate worlds, obviously, but try to entice casual players onto the upgrade track with in-game tales of "the real action" happening on the frequent upgrade track, while they're dinking around in a relative backwater of the game world. E.g. base game is around a home city under attack, upgrades wander the world taking it to the enemy in new and exciting places - but also able to return to the home city to brag of their exploits.

Re:MMO for All

[Anonymous Coward]

0 -- You're talking about events or story lines; Muds already do this, with trivia contests etc; and it would not work for most casual gamers because it would be the same effect as walking into the middle of a movie from their POV.

2 to 3 -- Well then you just have content to grind through, and what would be the point of having a game when you can just kill the end of level boss, with in the first five minutes. Also this is like dumbing the game down which takes away the depth and as a result just makes in more a hack and slash. Which is what I thought we were trying to get away from IMHO.

4 to 6 -- This would take some coordination within the industry; and is unlikly to happen. Possible but then again so is world peace.

7 -- Be careful what you wish for you just might get it. Who whats to be called a "fucking faggot" by some kid in Ohio. Or have a group of house wives spam you about their day in Swedish. They have this "feature" for Live and most FPS games on the market already, and it something I wish they would uninvent. A total waste of bandwidth IMHO.

8 -- What the hell do you call servers!?

9 -- And Everquest had how many expansions? really you're talking about a way to milk money from the hardcore. Which would just turn them into the main revenue stream of the game and, as a result, would just make the game by and for them; like what Everquest is today - locking casual players out the game.

why not casual servers?

[Anonymous Coward]

So why don't any companies offer a casual server along with their regular servers? Cap the amount of hours you can spend in the server to say 30 a month, let any remaining time carry over to successive months so that if you're on holidays or something you can get that extra gaming in. Increase experience and loot drops by 20% or something low like that to speed things up just a tad.

I know I'd be more inclined to play a mmorpg if they had something like this.

Eliminate Levels!

[Harker]

I've played MMORPGs since Asherons Call went live (99?) and seen several different attempts at creating 'casual friendly' game play, and they always fail.

The reason: Levels.

The power games will power level their way to the top (and then complain there's nothing to do, but that's another rant). Always, always, always.

Some look at it as a status symbol. The race to be the first max-level character on the server, or in the entire game even (right after release).

The PK players want the levels so they can be competitive.

How to fix this? Remove the concept of levels. Create a true skill-based system that uses no visible numbers of any kind.

You start out as "Joe Average" with no special skills, or maybe a few chosen at character creation. From that point on, you gain experience in the skills you use. If you neglect a skill (ie: not use it for a long time) they atrophy as you "get rusty" at that particular task.

If you want to learn a new skill, start working at it. Pick up that mace and use it for a while instead of your longsword. The more you use it, the better you get with it.

The trick is not to publish the stats to anybody. It's all internal to the game mechanics and nobody knows exactly how good you are.

Imagine it. No race to the top. No concerning yourself with how high a level you are for PvP play.

Instead, you try and fail, or succeed when you go up against that Orc boss mob. Only trial and error will show. If you fail, go work out some more on easier mobs until you feel you can try again.

If your a PvP player, you now have to choose your opponents with care. That dude that's taunting you is someone you've never seen before. Is he a newbie, or just someone you've missed all this time. Do you dare challenge him?

It would make the trek into new lands a true adventure. No more checking on maps to determine if your character is high enough level to try out that zone. You'll really have to take a chance for once.

For the casual gamers, this will still mean that there will always be those who are higher level/more powerful, but this way, it is not as obvious.

Play with your friends, sure. You may die along the way if something they can handle gets to you somehow, but at least you will not be blocked from participating.

KOL

[Wilson_6500]

KOL was a huge hit for me not because it was so accessible, but because it was funny as hell.

Its accessibility is tremendous, though. I didn't even realize that there existed the community of hardcore people absolutely devoted to having X-hundred turns every day until I read the forums a bit...

It is very accessible, but it's also not a standard MMO. The biggest difference is that you really can't party at all. You chat with others, you trade with them, you cast spells on them, PvP--pretty much everything but form groups and fight the same monsters, unless I missed something major. In fact, the whole thing as far as I can tell is for the most part instanced--what you do isn't really tied to what anyone else in the Kingdom is doing, unless you're buying stuff.

Unfortunately, the saga of the Disco Bandit "Senator Jim Death" ended when I forgot to log in for a long, long time, and he got knocked back to level 1.

Research

[mqduck]

"Personally, while I consume my fair share, I'm still only primarily interested in them from an academic perspective, as resources of human sociability in online space"

Uh... Yea. Me too.

-Baxtor the Almighty

Casual Players interested in PvP need not apply

[disc-chord]

While GW is fine if all you want to do is whack on rats or whatever brain-dead AI you encounter, it is a completely unfriendly game for casual PVP.

This is a real shame because the game was originally marketed as the game you'd just pick up and play when you want... how you want.

By the time of retail release it became a requirement to play approximately 1000 hours of PvE unlocking skills to compete in PvP and GvG. There are pre-made characters you can hop on without playing any PvE, but they just can't compete and are woefully inadequate for GvG.

I'm terribly disappointed in this and feel really burned because I just wanted to PvP with my clan; I have no interest or desire in spending any amount of time PvEing... That's why I bought a game called Guild Wars, not EQ2, not WOW, and not any of the other dozen or so games that already cater to a PvE audience.

It is my sincere belief that for a game to really reach casual-gamers they need to stop the PvE treadmill. PvE doesn't appeal to casual gamers... PvE only appeals to Koreans and a small minority of gamers with obsessive/addictive personality disorders. This is why FPS online gaming has numbers no MMO can touch. When I want to play I just play... I don't/can't/won't spend any amount of time getting ready to play!

PlanetSide was close to the mark but had woefully incompetent developers and a very dubious publisher at the helm.

Re:Casual Players interested in PvP need not apply

[Anonymous Coward]

... play approximately 1000 hours of PvE unlocking skills to compete in PvP and GvG

They changed this, you can now get skills/runes/weapons upgrade by just PvPing.

Re:Casual Players interested in PvP need not apply

[dwpro]

You might notice the most recent patch that came out. Characters can now obtain particular skills and items simply from playing the game pvp. you can obtain "faction" from random team battles, team battles, hall of heroes and guil battles.
I takes somethink like 2000 faction to get a superior rune, and you get something like 12 faction for a single win in a random battle. Guild and HOH are much higher in payout as well, I think guild battles are in the realm of 300-500 faction. You might look back into it.

WoW is a great game for casual gamers

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure why some people say that WoW doesn't accomplish what casual gamers need... You can *easily* solo to level 60. There are quests for groups, and quests for soloing. The group quests are generally more fun, however if you're talking about the XP grind they're both about the same.

Heck, the game gives you BONUS xp for NOT playing!!! Just log off in an Inn. Don't play for a couple days? no problem! You log back in and you have rested xp waiting to be gained for free!

Oh but once at level 60 you need to spend hours and hours if you want to have the best gear!!! Uhhh..... what? I spend a grand total of 8 hours per WEEK in the end game instances.

Onyxia takes around 30 minutes for a good guild. You log on, group up, kill her then log off. Any longer than 30 minutes and you're doing something wrong.

Molten Core - ok yes it takes around 6 hours to run from start to finish. (Again if you know what you're doing) But it's only once per week. 1 day of hardcore gaming for the entire week then there's a lockout timer so you don't even have to log in for 5 days if you don't want to!

This game has casual gamer written all over it. I'm not sure how anybody can argue otherwise.

Re:WoW is a great game for casual gamers

[C0rinthian]

The reason it's not truly casual is that the casual content ends at 60. Anything worthwhile doing is not casual. It either requires massive amounts of people, massive amounts of time, or both.

Difficult but short 5 man instances would be casual. 40-man raids are NOT casual.

Molten Core - Many players don't have 6 hours to sit down and game. Let alone getting that block of time to conincide for a group of 40. NOT CASUAL. Onyxia is better to an extent because the encounter is short, but what about the damn key quest? Or gearing up?

WoW tried to cater to both and pleased neither. The hardcore are upset because it's too easy to level, and the casual are upset because there's no endgame content for them.

Then make a change...

[qw(name)]

If companies want casual players then they need to make a change. Either make the software free or the subscription free. Do not charge for both!.

Re:Then make a change...

[tetsu96]

And it's such a simple concept too. SOE has charged how much for the retail boxes + expansions, and they still charge monthly fees?

NWN and GWs have one fee, easy enough to swallow (OK, + Exp packs but they're one time as well). I can see that and would (have) bought into that.

As for $50 for the box, $30 per expansion, and $15 a month? Pfft, forget it!

Re:Then make a change...

[C0rinthian]

NWN - no server upkeep as it's all player run. Easy to have no recurring charges then.

Guild Wars - ArenaNet is hoping that more box sales will make up for the lack of recurring income. Time will tell.

Speaking as a casual gamer?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Don't reach for me. I won't pay a monthly fee to play a game.

I dislike the business model, I don't have the time to compete against kids with 12 hours or more leisure time hours devoted daily, and honestly, I don't have the time to make the "online social connections" to succeed in the genre.

Cater to your fans - develop the game for them.

"Resources of human sociability in online space"

[Zhe Mappel]

"I'm still only primarily interested in them from an academic perspective, as resources of human sociability in online space."

Read any good articles in Playboy lately, buddy?

Short-circuiting.

[Grendel Drago]

I think MMOGs short-circuit something very, very important. As human beings, we have mechanisms that keep us from stagnating. If we sit in one spot for hours on end, we get bored. But MMOGs are a behaviorist's wet dream, providing a complex system of goals, rewards, whatever it takes to keep the player online for as long as possible. Some people can do this and not fuck up their lives. some cannot.

A friend of a friend who got hooked on Everquest wound up losing custody of her child (under six years old, I think) because she couldn't be bothered to take care of of it---the game was more important. That frightens me.

If we don't get human contact, we die. Literally, we die. (Look at prisoners kept in solitary confinement for months or years in the early days of prisons---their bodily needs are taken care of, but they lose the will to live.) Well, some people can become hermits, but most people can't.

If we didn't go to such lengths to short-circuit these mechanisms---like boredom---the Hikikomori would have to leave their rooms. It's a dead end, and it's self-destructive.

And that's why, despite enjoying Warcraft III immensely, I will never touch World of Warcraft.

Wait, someone already did it.

[Grendel Drago]

See The Virtual Skinner Box, an essay on Everquest (but really about MMOGs in general) written from a behaviorist perspective.

--grendel drago

Everyone's got the answer, huh?

[cbreaker]

So, your ideas aren't new. They've been attempted in one form or another; pretty much from the start.

"1. Make the earlier levels more enjoyable."

EQ2 had a crap load to do at low levels. Even EQ has plenty to do, explore, etc. At low levels. You've put your own pressure on yourself to "grind" them away instead of enjoying them. And there's even games without levels at all (SWG, etc.)

"2. Find a new genre. No, you're not Tolkien. Every single game doesn't need trolls, orcs and dragons. Nor magic spells."

But a lot of us LIKE dungeons and dragons. And magic, and orcs. I do. It's not a bad setting, and it happens to play exceptionally well in the MMORPG genre. However, if it's not for you, you could check out SWG or a few of the others that don't follow the mystical theme. But what else is there? What else works as well? I can't think of too much. And anything I could come up with is probably already on the drawing board somewhere.

"3. If you're having PK make it reasonable. You don't want high players going round killing every lowbie they find"

What MMORPG's have you played, exactly? Besides original OU, most MMORPG's have limits on player killing. You must be within level ranges, or something like that. Or you must agree to do PvP with another player (ala /duel.) You can play on a full PVP server, or not. You could play WoW with only some areas PvP. Likewise with others.

One of the biggest problems with PvP is class balance. EQ was never really designed for PvP - it came after. Classes had a lot of different traits that made them useful in groups or raids, but not in PvP. A Wizard could bomb the shit out of you, or a cleric could just keep healing himself. A pure melee would be fucked, even with all his armor and hit points.

So how do you make a game both good for raids or PvE encounters, and PvP, without dulling both?

"4. Make the game rewarding and exciting."

I'm sure the goal of every MMORPG developer is to make the game crappy and boring.

" Of course grinding-games like Everquest with fixed-mobs and fixed-loads will never be that exciting. Equipment can't load consistently, it has to be random. That evil dragon can't load the magic potion every time, it has to be say 1 in 5. And you can't find out 'till it's dead. That's what makes it exciting."

Okay - wait. How is your idea different from EQ, exactly? Killing the same mob over and over to get that rare epic drop or armor component? And since when can you tell what EQ mobs have for loot before they die? ShowEQ hasn't shown loot for many years.

"When you gain a level, it has to mean something, even at low levels. Going from level 1 to 2, or 4 to 5 should give you something on top of the number. "

Nothing new here. Even in EQ, you get more abilities and spells quite often, even at low levels. When I played EQ, I enjoyed every level UNTIL the higher levels. So I'm really not sure where you keep coming from with this "low levels need to be fun" stuff. They were/are.

In fact, what kept the pressure OFF me to level in EQ, until maybe level 47, was the insurmountable amount of time that was required to reach 60. I didn't worry about it, because it was so far away.

"5. Keep the levels down. Don't let people get to level one million so if you only play a few hours a week you may as well not bother. Level gain should not be linear."

Herein lies the crux of the matter. None of the other garbage means much, because it all comes down to this.

If some guy can spend a lot of time in the game, and does, and works hard at advancing his character - is it right that JoeShmoe casual player with no dedication to the game gets the same level of play? And what's to keep the people that can spend time playing, paying?

You need to benefit players that play a lot, because these players will pay month after month as long as the game keeps them going. If you deliberately ne

Re:Everyone's got the answer, huh?

[drsquare]

So how do you make a game both good for raids or PvE encounters, and PvP, without dulling both?

You design it properly from the ground up. If you lack ideas, go and see one of the game where player-killing is done properly.

I'm sure the goal of every MMORPG developer is to make the game crappy and boring.

Given on the mmorpgs I've seen, that does seem to be the case. It's a question of keeping you grinding up the levels to keep paying money.

Christ, you're just an Everquest fanboy.

Re:Everyone's got the answer, huh?

[cbreaker]

" go and see one of the game where player-killing is done properly."

Name a few. Name a few that have both good PvP and interesting PvE in the same game.

"Christ, you're just an Everquest fanboy."

No, although it's obvious that I played EQ more then any of the others. I draw from my experience in that game - pointing out that many of the ideas mentioned were already in EQ and it obviously didn't help the casual gamer any.

Skill should be the most important element

[Jackmn]

This is something that Planetside initially did correctly - skill is far more important than the weapons you accumulate over time. Players should still develop over time, acquiring items and experience. However, these perks should not supplant the need for skill in PVP combat. In a PVP situation, a poor player with an advanced character should still lose to a skilled player with a relatively new character.

Other styles.

[FEEBLE*BMX]

I think it's fairly obvious that all of the MMORPGs are based on the same template. If they want to attract more players then they need to give up on the RPG genre and branch out into sports and other things that people might like to do.

Some people like to dress up as Elves and play D&D but how many more people belong to Motorcycle clubs or Car clubs? How many people play Golf? Lots.

Bringing the MMO game model to other interests is the way to go. Imagine a MMO Auto Racing game. There could be a persistant city you could drive around with races being held on tracks in various locations. If you have a FWD, 4 cylinder car you could go race against other people with the same style of car. Casual gamers could all afford a Civic and longtime gamers would just have a larger collection of cars. They might have a Ferarri but they could only race that car against other rear engine supercars.

Check out this game in the Golf genre: www.shot-online.com

The real problem is ...

[getkashyap]

that as we have grown into a more and more 'civilized' race, we have lesser (and lesser) free time. Yeah, a casual gamer on a 'normal' offline game can play around a bit, squeezing in a few gaming hours here and there.

But then, that's not how you want to play an MMOG, right? Q.E.D. ... they wont really take off. Not anytime now anyway. :) Not unless we come up with robots that do all our work for us and we have nothing else to do all day or something ;)

Most ignored MMO could be the answer to many

[novalogic]

Eve Online could be the answer to a few, on top of great graphics, an amazing economy, and very social setting, there is no grind at all, skills are learn in real time. Some skills take 15 minutes to learn, others can take as long as 60 days to learn. After the first month of playing, you could not log in for two weeks and still advance the same as if you played 24/7 with the exception of making money, which is not very hard to do.

dumbing down

[mlylecarlin]

"dumbing it down"? How can you get any dumber than Everquest?

Casual != Grind

[suttree.com]

Casual gaming doesn't mean spending 40 hours a week 'mining' and 'leveling up'. What the Guardian Gamesblog is missing (yet again) is a proper look at the alternatives. There are hundreds of browser based MMORPGs, there's Neopets and there's Habbo Hotel, Gaia online and so on.

Casual gaming and MMORPGs *can* go hand in hand but not in the current format. Browser based MMORPGs are much more likely to succeed given that casual gaming means gaming at your desk and insatlling the drivers, booting up the lastest game connecting to your local server is all too much to be defined casual.

Are you crazy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have played EQ2 and WoW and I have to say that Guild wars has THE best, most tactical, and IMO the funnest PVP system.

Re:Are you crazy?

[Per Abrahamsen]

Yes, but now you are comparing Guild Wars PvP to MMORPG's. The original poster was comparing to FPS.

Guild Wars, being something new, is not a perfect match for those who are already happy in either the FPS or the MMORPG camp.

Guild Wars is for the rest of us.

US$ 15 a month is not "casual friendly"

[Per Abrahamsen]

Any game with a monthly fee is by definition for obsessive gamers. A monthly fee also encourage grind in order to stretch the content out over as many months as possible, and grind is another thing that bores casual gamers.

A casual friendly MMORPG will have no monthly fee and no more grind than a single player games. And the gamers should not be expected to play the game more than they would a typical single player game.

The closest thing I have found is Guild Wars, which being fully instantiated may not qualify as a MMORPG. It mostly play like a single player game, where you can party with (and against) other players if you so desire. Multiplayer, but not really massive.

Casual Players don't play for the ladder

[Per Abrahamsen]

No "casual player" is ever going to compete on the top of the global ladder. That requires skill, which require more practice than a casual player can manage.

For the *casual* gamer, PvP in Guild Wars is just fine. GvG will make you meet other guilds at your own level, whatever that is. And yes, yu can get pretty far with the standard templates. But of course, poor losers will always blame their loses on the templates, rather than their lack of skill.

Compared to a FPS, being really competitive in Guild Wars require that you play the PvE game through once. The PvE game as been structured as one large training mission for PvP. It takes at most 100 hours (if you suck) to play the game through and obtain any particular build you desire. You are then as competive as anyone. If you want to change your build, you can do that with points obtained in PvP.

Unfortunately a handful of people with severe personality disorders have desided that they'd rather spend their time bragging about their comprehension deficit about what the game was supposed to be on the fora, than play the semi-obligatory training mission.

Re:Casual Players don't play for the ladder

[Anonymous Coward]

The PvE game as been structured as one large training mission for PvP. It takes at most 100 hours (if you suck) to play the game through and obtain any particular build you desire. You are then as competive as anyone.

Do you realise how long 100 hours of gameplay is? I see a casual gamer as someone who plays for a couple of hours, 2 or 3 times a week. 100 hours at 6 hours per week is close to 4 months, which is a hell of a long time to spend on what you describe as a "training mission".

Re:Casual Players don't play for the ladder

[Anonymous Coward]

It's way faster than any other MMORPG on the market...

Bloody Buzz words..

[Flaming Death]

MMO's are one buzzword that is well past its used by date. Developers have been trying to sell the idea of a profitable MMO to publishers for year - look at the results. Almost 90% of all MMO projects that get underway, get canned due to unrealistic expectations of the audience.

You need massive amount of money to run decent resources to serve large MMO's, and that usually mean monthly fees. Casual gamers will _never_ be interested in this sort of setup.. because they are ... oooh.. CASUAL.. Once developers quit with this damn annoying and money wasting buzz word.. the game dev industry will be a much better place to work in...

Only few developer can afford.. and understand the implications of MMO's and pull them off business wise.. short of developing similar studios.. theres stuff all point in attempting these games..

The average lifespan of a game is extremely short these days. And the gaming community is an extremely mobile community. Look how quiet WoW is at the moment while BF2 servers are full all over? This is the problem.. until people realise the economic model for MMO's doesnt work.. we will see more stupid failures..

Kingdom of Loathing

[ScreamingSlave]

Anyone else play? I'm hopelessly addicted to it. http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/

This is what I like about Guild Wars.

[Nixus]

Guild Wars offers some features other MMOs don't. This is why I play:

1. No subscription fee.
2. At any time I can simply quit the program without worrying about getting my corpse, XP loss, camping in a safe spot, or training people. The next time I log in I will be in the last city place I was in, with full gear, and no xp penalty.
3. They have designed the game from the ground up with the mantra that Skill > Time put into the game.
A. The level cap is 20. Just by doing the missions and quests in the first half of the world you can easily get to level 20.
B. You can bypass leveling and create a level 20 character that is for PVP only. You can unlock all of the skills for PVP by either just leveling up your normal character or by fighting in PVP battles and earning points for the upgrades you need.
4. Their streaming content means no more 18 hours of downtime while they patch the game.
5. The game has only been out for 2 months. I was in beta, but still this is a very new game. ArenaNet's Baby. They are taking very good care of it.
6. They constantly actively listen to the community on their own hosted boards and of the fansites boards.

I doubt anyone here who games could ever have a perfect game for them. But these 6 reasons rank high on my "must have" list for a MMO. Just my 2 Cents.

More comments on Everquest 2 please??

[Cernst77]

I absolutely loved EQ1 and was wondering if there is anything good about EQ2 to warrant trying it. I do not believe I will *live* in the game but I can devote 6-8 hours on it a couple times a week, no problem. am I going to have to build a new machine first? (p4 1.7 ghz 512mb ram geforce 3 128mb) the only thing that really pissed me off in EQ1 is when they nerfed the monk (martial arts guy for those that havent played) class. never got high enough level to raid, the highest I got was a 54 necro and didnt have the correct expansions to raid, and no money to buy them with (was unemployed due to an injury) Should I try EQ2? is there as many people playing it as EQ1? has the community in EQ1 since dropped off? I havent been on EQ1 for a year

Re:More comments on Everquest 2 please??

[WuphonsReach]

Back when I left EQ1 in 2003 (after close to 2 years of playing to the mid-50s on a few toons), I swore I'd never play another SOE game. But, I picked up EQ2 on a whim the week after it launched.

EQ2 corrects a lot of the issues that were in EQ1, but also introduces a few new ones.

The high points:

- Trial of the Isle, which is a downloadable demo of the first zone in the game. Which will introduce you to the first 6 levels, the 4 archetypes, and how the quest system works. Near as I can tell, it's a free download and a good way to find out if your system can handle the EQ2 graphics. That GeForce3 card probably can't do it.

- Quests are numerous. Some are soloable, some are group, some are epic. One of the mid-spring patches added a level indicator, and a future patch will add a flag that tells you if the quest is soloable or requires a group or raid.

- Decent gear at a low level. With a bit of footwork, you can have decent gear in your low levels.

- Vitality system, double XP until you run out of vitality. Takes maybe 10 hours of grinding to drain your vitality pool, and a week to fill.

- All classes can solo, some a little better then others. The 'overland' zones (outdoors) are filled with solo mobs, most group content is in the dungeons.

- Only 2 starting cities. Which makes it more likely to find groups at low levels.

- Crafted gear is viable and desireable.

It's not a bad game, if you accept it for what it is rather then forcing pre-conceptions on it.

Grind-wise, it's as much of a grind as you make it. If all you do is camp in the corner of zone and pull, it's a grindfest. OTOH, if you kill a few mobs here, a few mobs there, and finish this quest, get a few for this other quest, it's less of a grind.

There's a lot of mid-game content, so not a lot of reason to grind to 50 ASAP. In fact, you're likely to outlevel a lot of content unless you actively seek it out.

Re:More comments on Everquest 2 please??

[Cernst77]

hehe, already playing the trial before you posted this. my graphics card seems to handle it ok, but I will probably build a new machine for this game! it is indeed pretty cool. my priest has already hit level 6++ (extra experience but I havent bought the game yet so I can't go to 7) and has done all his quests plus helped kill the pirate ghost and did that quest too. can't wait to buy the game and visit qeynos itself. meanwhile I might level a bunch of toons to 6. lol! what server are you on?

Who cares?

[kilauea]

I don't MMOG's for my console. They bore me stupid, which is why I am a console, not a P.C gamer.

Eve Online

[C0rinthian]

Eve Online for instance seems to be a game for the purpose of displaying their 'fog' technology.

I've played Eve for almost two years, and honestly don't know what you're referring to here.

Eve is actually a very good attempt to break out of the 'standard MMO' mold. The game is focused on complex player interaction. The skill system defeats power-levelling completely, and has diminishing returns build in. (still time based though) The only real grind is financial, but if you're a smart player with a little luck you can avoid it.

Unfortunately, the games complexity leads to a VERY steep learning curve, and mistakes can be costly. Add in the non-consentual PvP and the game ends up being pretty hardcore. Probably a little too hardcore for the casual gamer.

Personally, I like the challenge presented and the risk involved. It makes ingame success much more rewarding.

Casual guild wars...

[slycrel]

Quick comment on Guild Wars for you.

There is an increasing rift between PvE and PvP players. It all seems to boil down to unlocking skills, and to a lesser degree, superior modifier items. ArenaSoft has tried to blunt the farming for superior runes by allowing them to be bought as well as making them unlockable with "faction points" after countless hours of (winning) PvP. That's all fine and good... but here's the real stickler. NOTHING starts out unlocked.

Many people bought guild wars based on their PvP word of mouth from the betas and their promise to be casual player friendly. I personally have spent days of the last two months playing this game and have only about 15% of the total skills unlocked and a very small amount of the runes unlocked. I should say here that I have finished the single player campaign and am itching to get into more guild vs guild play and such. Anyhow, in order to get the majority (~65-70%) of the skills and items unlocked I wuill be expected to go through the PvE campaign no less than 3 times to get this far. That's a pretty big grind, and at ~75 hours per character give or take, I won't be doing this any time soon. The PvP players feel a bit cheated because it has as so many other MMO's before it become time > skill, which was specifically advertised as not being the case. My box says, just inside the front cover "You'll prove your worth with every battle as skill, not hours played, decides your fate. Whether battling horrific monsters or competing at the highest levels of tournament play, it will always be your skill that earns you victory or defeat." Now, I'm not one to take advertising literally... but it... feels like they have put (or maybe are just keeping) this grind here for a reason. The PvP aspect above is jsut plain false.

The devs seem to be paying attention though, so there's hope that this may change. We'll see. Sorry about the rant. It has nothing particular to do with your post. (I liked it). =)