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Slashback: MMORPG Trends

Posted by Zonk on from the upcoming-virtual-thingies dept.

Some additional details on stories we've previously discussed. The Garriott brothers gave a talk at the DICE conference earlier this month, and while Next Generation offered the gist of the Garriot keynote, Gamespy has a detailed look at their predictions. We also talked earlier about World of Warcraft as the new golf. C|Net has a deeper look at the trend of networking in Azeroth. From that article: "With more than 5.5 million people now playing WoW and joining guilds for everything from police officers to soldiers returning from Iraq, it was bound to happen: The rich guys have carved a virtual space to call their own. In fairness, the six-month-old guild isn't just for rich folks. There are plenty of bartenders and regular workaday types in the group as well. But what sets 'We Know' apart is its concentration of movers and shakers in the technology world."

52 comments

  1. How on earth.. by dan+dan+the+dna+man · · Score: 2, Funny

    do CEO's of companies have time to sit around playing WoW?

    I barely have enough time to post to slashdot these days!

    --
    I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
    1. Re:How on earth.. by stinerman · · Score: 0, Troll

      You're kidding, right? CEO's don't do a damn thing but find out novel ways of pumping up their corporation's stock price so they can dump it just before the shit hits the fan.

    2. Re:How on earth.. by faloi · · Score: 1

      Laying people off so the stock price inflates is hardly novel.

      --
      "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
    3. Re:How on earth.. by turrican · · Score: 1

      Easy! It's an age-old setup:

      You: do all the work.

      The Boss: doesn't.

      (and, btw, he just told me to tell you that you're spending too much time on slashdot...)

    4. Re:How on earth.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They don't. The article about WoW being the new golf is complete rubbish. 5.5 subscribers to WoW might be a lot for an online game, but in the grand scheme of things that's a very small number. Especially, when you consider that the vast vast majority of those players are under the age of 20 and quite a few have multiple accounts.

    5. Re:How on earth.. by gad_zuki! · · Score: 1

      These are geek fantasies. In reality WoW is an incredible timesink, has a real learning curve for non-gamers, and players who dont get into helpful guilds don't usually advance. In real life, you can't do a MC run during your 9-5 job and if WoW is the new golf, please tell me who these golfers are so I can avoid their company. Obviously they're over-hiring.

      Not to be a jerk, in fact I played WoW when I did support, but I could only play for a little bit at time. So we're talking very basic killing and quick alt-f4's when I needed to get work done or when something came up. If my character died during that period, then so be it.

    6. Re:How on earth.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do they have time to play golf?
      I fail to see why what game someone plays, matters. Golf is pretty time consuming too. It definitely takes longer to move up a level in golf ; )

  2. I'm sorry, but... by Psmylie · · Score: 5, Funny

    We have to let you go. Having a ninja-looter like yourself on our team undercuts morale.

    --

    psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo

    1. Re:I'm sorry, but... by happyemoticon · · Score: 3, Funny

      No, you don't understand. Shallow corporate raiders are the RL equivalent ninja-looters.

  3. Why is it... by garrett714 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    ... that even with the amount of new subscribers (more $$$) in WoW and the new servers they keep adding, I still see heavy lag and wait times to get into servers. Why when I'm paying $15 a month should I have to suffer like this?

    1. Re:Why is it... by Fizzog · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've been noticing this as well.

      Even when I have a ping of 50ms the game can still be laggy. I have a pretty decent system (A64-3700, 1Gig of Cas 2, 6800GT, 74GB Raptor) so with a ping of 50ms the issues are at their end.

      My guess is that either:

      a) they are running out of backbone bandwidth (unlikely), or

      b) they have downgraded the spec of the servers they are now buying to the bare minimum they can get away with, just to save a few bucks

    2. Re:Why is it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I don't know why you got modded as a troll, because you're only speaking the truth.

      Do like me.

      Quit.

    3. Re:Why is it... by phlinn · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Probably because most new players join the already existing servers that their friends who got them into the game are playing on. The bigger the server, the more this happens. Closing off new chars on existing servers is just a way to get older players to start over so they can play with their friends.

      --
      "Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
    4. Re:Why is it... by Ayaress · · Score: 1

      Have you changed servers? The old servers haven't lightened up much at all. If you're staying on your year-old server, especially if it's one of the locked servers, you won't see any improvement at all.

      On the new servers, it depends on which one your on. There are, in the US, 12 PVP servers that are on very low user levels, and lag is negligible on those. For Normal servers, switch to one that's at Medium traffic - they've been there for a long time, and are well established, but actually have less traffic than most of the New-tagged servers, which got a small influx from every High and Full tagged server on launch day. For a good demonstration, look at the Dark Iron server. Add in the webcomic guilds to the massive flood of refugees from full servers like Arthas, and Dark Iron ended up being the most overpopulated server in the game within days.

      And if you want to play an RP or RPPVP server... well, they're all at full, many are locked right now, transfers are rare, and new servers are flooded to Full status by refuggees from every other RP server within hours of going online. You'll never escape lag on these servers.

    5. Re:Why is it... by thouth · · Score: 1

      You still have to suffer like that because your only paying $15 a month as you said. What can you buy for $15 that lets you have an awesome online experience with countless others, make new friends there, battle giant monsters solo or with a team of up to 39 others and generally being able to kick the ass of others. $15 for a month of play? Seems like you can put up with a bit of waiting and slight lag for that price. Anyway, if you think you have bad lag, try play it from anywhere thats not in .us or .europe.

    6. Re:Why is it... by Psychochild · · Score: 1

      For Normal servers, switch to one that's at Medium traffic - they've been there for a long time, and are well established, but actually have less traffic than most of the New-tagged servers, which got a small influx from every High and Full tagged server on launch day.

      Until, of course, they decide to offer transfers to people from a high-population to your medium-population server. Then you get to experience an influx of rude people, lag, and wait queues during most of the time you're interested in playing.

      Not that I'm bitter...

      --
      Brian "Psychochild" Green
      MMO developer's blog
    7. Re:Why is it... by rohlfinator · · Score: 1
      "You still have to suffer like that because your only paying $15 a month as you said.
      Only $15 a month? With over 5 million subscibers, Blizzard has a steady revenue stream of $75 million a month. For comparison, it cost Bungie around $40 million to develop Halo 2 over the course of three years, and H2 was considered a very high-budget game. Blizzard is making nearly twice that in a month. They have more than enough financial resources to keep the game running perfectly for every single paying customer.

      I could understand the "$15 a month isn't a lot" excuse with a smaller MMORPG, but Blizzard currently has money coming out the wazoo. Money is not an excuse.
    8. Re:Why is it... by typidemon · · Score: 1

      WoW was poorly implemented by people who didn't understand what they were getting into and the technical needs of the project were overshadowed by the artistic nature of Blizzard. Don't get me wrong, WoW is a great game ... until the servers start to break around you.

    9. Re:Why is it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you know how much a net connection capable of handling 5.5 million subscribers in a real-time game costs per month? No? Thought not.

      Don't assume you can predict the maintenance cost of such a massive system because you have a broadband connection which you pay for.

    10. Re:Why is it... by festers · · Score: 1

      The WoW servers can only support about 3000 players logged in at one time...if a server is popular (20,000+ accounts with characters on it) you can see why this would be a problem. I'd hardly call 3k concurrent players "massively multiplayer", WoW was poorly designed to handle the load.

      --


      -------
      "Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
    11. Re:Why is it... by rohlfinator · · Score: 1

      First of all, there is no single connection that supports 5.5 million subscribers. The game is divided over many different servers worldwide, and there are never 5.5 million players logged in at the same time. And as evidenced by the lag and queue lines, their servers obviously can't handle their full load of subscribers flawlessly.

      And no, I'm not basing this off the costs of my broadband connection. I'm basing it off the fact that other MMOs in the past (like Everquest) were successful with a cheaper monthly fee and fewer users. In practice, the average cost per user should decrease as the number of users increases, yet Blizzard charges more than other MMOs. Unless WoW requires significantly more bandwidth per player than Everquest or Lineage, your argument is flawed.

      The fact is that Blizzard currently has close to the largest revenue stream in the history of the industry. Maybe I should reclarify this: their revenue in one month is enough to finance the development of over 70 average console games. And that's not even counting the initial purchase of the game. I agree that the costs of bandwidth are high, but not nearly that high. Many less successful MMORPGs have been able to cover the cost of bandwidth, even with a revenue stream an order of magnitude smaller.

  4. World of Warcraft as the new golf. by Eightyford · · Score: 2, Funny

    World of Warcraft as the new golf.

    That is the dumbest thing I heard all day. And I just watched an interview with Cindy Sheehan.

    --
    Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
    1. Re:World of Warcraft as the new golf. by Attaturk · · Score: 1


      That is the dumbest thing I heard all day. And I just watched an interview with Cindy Sheehan.

      Now that's the dumbest thing that I've heard all day. And I just RTFA!

    2. Re:World of Warcraft as the new golf. by tehlinux · · Score: 1

      That's the stupidest story I ever heard. And I read the entire Sweet Valley High series.

      --
      Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
    3. Re:World of Warcraft as the new golf. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not as silly as you may think. I work for a Technology company, and many of the under-40 of the execs play it. It's like playing golf with several veeps, and the president of my company, at least :)

  5. MMORPG by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Other MMORPG trends:

    Awkwardness, sexlessness.

    1. Re:MMORPG by nubbie · · Score: 1

      WTS [sex] PST

      --
      'Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes, aaarrrrrrrr!' -- Minsc
  6. A Much Disliked MMORPG Trend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    I've noticed that the latest crop of MMORPGs are aiming to the wussy crowd. These titles offer no real challenge and put up a shiney happy people facade that can't offend anyone. Personally I think it stinks.

    There is no real rivalry amongst guilds any more, why would there be when you all have your safe little instances free from being steamrolled by another guild.

    Where's the rampant petitions and calls for GMs when that other guild ganked your great big dragon after you cleared the way to it and were preparing for the fight?

    No chance of that bastard stealing the ore you've been mining for the past 15 minutes, you just can't PvP me here, ever.

    I see a future where online games like EverQuest, Ultima Online, and Shadowbane won't be made. The challenge is over, all you have to look forward to is a wasteland of baby-sitting titles.

    1. Re:A Much Disliked MMORPG Trend by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 1

      I bet you're the type of person who goes around calling people "Care Bears".

      Rock on, 10-hour day gamer! You win the contest to see whose time is the least valuable!

    2. Re:A Much Disliked MMORPG Trend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      although true there is a business reason for that. UO, Everquest, Shadowbane all combined still dont have a fraction of the subs that a game like WoW has.

      Dont get me wrong I dont like WoW all that much but I respect what they accomplished.
      Bashing in all the sacred cows like death should mean something(only to hardcore players obviously), progession should be hard and slow(again hardcore niche players), etc.

      They went against the norm and made a game that although viewed as "too easy" by many,
      just dominated the market.

      so lets see, spend 50million dollars and make a niche game that gets 150k subs, or spend 50million to make a more casual "easy" game that gets 5million subs.

      when it comes to getting investors to spend that kind of money on a game you know exactly which one they want.

      for the niche hardcore market your going to have to figure out how to make them a lot cheaper which probably means a lot less content on launch. figure out how to run it on super cheap hardware, and support it with minimal people. probably can be done but not much incentive to do so from a business standpoint, but there is certainly room for more niche/hardcode MMO games.

      as for this article, Im not really interested in what Garriot has to say, the guy that takes reasponsibilty for UO when he didnt have anything to do with its success (he wasnt even there anymore he had already sold origin to ea). He has been working on UO2/TR for almost 7 years now and he is trying to tell us whats going to happen to MMO's..please Id rather hear from the makers of WoW, or some of the even larger MMO games that are in China then here anymore unfounded crap from the garriot team.

    3. Re:A Much Disliked MMORPG Trend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How well did Shadowbane do by the way? That is, before it was pwnzored by the truely hardcore that had you crying to the devs asking them to make the hurting stop?

    4. Re:A Much Disliked MMORPG Trend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would but there are too many of you and you all speak many different languages. Is there a way to tell 5.5million subscribers that they're all care bears?

    5. Re:A Much Disliked MMORPG Trend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Rock on, 10-hour day gamer!

      ::cue background music::

      Announcer: Bud Light Presents: Real American Heroes
      Vocalist: (real american heroes)

      Today we salute you, Mr. 10-Hour Day Gamer.
      (Mr. 10-Hour Day Gamer)

      In a world where most people only play a few hours a day, you're not afraid to stick it out - all day long.
      (playing all day now)

      Aspring to new hights of simulated glory, you endure sitting at your desk for days at a time, ignoring anyone and any bodily function that could possibly get in the way.
      (gotta pee like cra-zy)

      Thanks to you, we know what it means to really play a game and look impressive while doing it!
      (IM S0 teh Aw3s0m3!!1!)

      So "Rock On!", and grab yourself an ice cold Bud Light Mr. 10-Hour Day Gamer. Because without you, there'd be nobody else to teach us what 'noob' or 'pwn' really mean.
      (please speak english to me)

      - Pragma

    6. Re:A Much Disliked MMORPG Trend by Bud+Light+Presents · · Score: 0

      Wow thanks for me reminding me I had this account.

    7. Re:A Much Disliked MMORPG Trend by Grifty · · Score: 1

      Indeed.

      If you're trying to appeal to a large segment of players, you have to make it mind-numbingly easy.
      People tend to play games (MMORPGs especially) to relax or escape, and they don't want to waste a lot of time 'thinking' or 'figuring out stuff'.

      UO has gotten nothing but more complicated over the years, and that huge learning curve is undoubtedly intimidating to new players.

      I can't say the same about WoW from what I've seen.
      If you want to keep your numbers up, make it like pop music, or anything else popular: Dumb it down.

      Quality does not equal popularity, and popularity is where the money is in the subscription world.

      --
      "Can I have your stuff?"
    8. Re:A Much Disliked MMORPG Trend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Carebeard is a term used to refer to anyone who does not play on a player-killer only server (such as DarkTime on Asheron's Call) not about whether you spend 10 hours a day in the game.

    9. Re:A Much Disliked MMORPG Trend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've given a lot of thought recently to what a MMORPG based on DaemonEye Publishing's "Dead Stars" scci-fi setting should look like. One immediate factor to put in would be to take advantage of their scaling difficulty technology system.

      You have a laundry list of common items you can buy with a simple Shopping check, the better your roll the more you find for sale. That represents the lowest scale of items, simple "point and purchase" acquisitions. Unfortunately the reason they are so easy to get is becasue they are easy to make, and frequently not the best thing for a particular situation.

      The next level would be items that are built to your specifications. This entails finding a person to Craft it (Gather Information check), then paying them half up front to make something with a feature or two you desired. Mostly this is aong the lines of taking that crappy unmodified Qulaity 4 Laser Rifle you picked up and having them attach a Cyber Sight. Slightly more complicated since it gets into the nuts-n-bolts of the technology system, but it does not require any real depth of knowledge with it.

      The final level is for the do-it-yourself characters. This means you have to spend skill points to purchase the desired Craft skills, but it also means you can make items for only parts costs and also get exactly the item you want. Or break down the cruddy items you scavenge for mateirals to make better items. I figure the best way to model this in an MMORPG would be to have a window in the log-out screen where you can design new gear and set your character to Crafting it while you are not logged in. Then when you log it you find out how much progress you have made towards finishing the item.

      Obviously the last level is for advanced players who have been at the game a while, but all told it should provide enough of a customized learning curve that noobs woul not feel intimidated.

      SETTING

      Each world in the "Dead Stars" universe would be its own server, with a common "space" server for runnign characters on orbital habitats and space ships. Characters could be mvoed form one server to anotehr simply by going to the planet's space port. By clustering this into server groups that are isolated from each-other, you can have multiple versions of the setting runnign with each in a RL geographically distinct location for minimum lag.

      Space travel would be handled similarly to do-it-yourself crafting. Time spent logged off on the space server, but not building anything, would accumulate "travel days", which can then be chashed in to take trips. Want to take a 2-week trip to the neighboring star system? You just need to accumulate 2 weeks of down time. This has the effect of making space travel form one server/world to another POSSIBLE, but the downtme necessary makes it unlikely.

      CHARACTERS

      In addition to the d20-variant system design for characters, players choose from a number of character goals. These goals determine two things: when the character earns bonus role-playing XP, and what special quests they can participate in.

      For instance, a character with the "Crafting" goal would earn bonus XP whenever they make an item and sell it to the local ShoppingNet. The more valuable the item, the more XP they earn. The same character would also be able to access quests wherein they have to travel to someplace remote and acquire a downed sattelite.

      In order to better fit into the adventuring party mold, these character goal quests would be eligible for invitation. You could invite a character WITHOUT the "Crafting" goal to share in your quest, and if you are successful then they gain the same amoutn of XP as you do for it.

      Then, just to be faithful to the setting, you could ahve goals that produce ANTITHETICAL quests. Take "saboteur" fppr instance. You gain bonus XP whenever you screw up the local government's devices. Your quests could be to STOP somebody on the "satelite recovery" quest as well!

      FACTIONS

      There aren't any. Instead there would be a web of interlocking quest goals and bonus XP reward conditions.

    10. Re:A Much Disliked MMORPG Trend by murdocj · · Score: 1

      As somebody who played EQ for about 5 years and WoW for about a year, I'd have to say WoW can be just as complex as EQ. Blizzard didn't "dumb it down", they took out the "camp this location for several weeks on end until blah spawn" nonsense. As far as I'm concerned, the dummies are the ones who mistake endless tedium for complexity.

    11. Re:A Much Disliked MMORPG Trend by rohlfinator · · Score: 1
      "If you're trying to appeal to a large segment of players, you have to make it mind-numbingly easy."
      Complicated != challenging. Case in point: chess or poker. Both are very simple to learn compared to most video games, yet they're both very deep games with many levels of strategy.

      There's a big difference between dumbing a game down and removing the tedium. I'm not an expert on MMORPGs by any means, but I was really turned off by the ridiculous tedium that was so prevalent in the genre pre-WoW. From what I've seen, WoW still requires plenty of strategy and thought, but it doesn't require as much time as previous MMOs.

      Maybe WoW is easier than most MMOs. I don't play it, so I can't make any claims either way. However, challenge is (mostly) unrelated to the learning curve of the game. Game developers should stick to the mantra, "easy to learn, difficult to master." It appears to me that Blizzard follows that rule better than most MMO devs.
    12. Re:A Much Disliked MMORPG Trend by Shihar · · Score: 1

      WoW is as complex as any other MMORPG. What WoW did differently is that for the first 40 levels or so they made it so that the game wasn't a massive time sink. They realized that tedious (ie "hard") games drove casual gamers away. EQ is a perfect example of a game that was "hard" for power gamers, and utterly intolerable for casual gamers. It wasn't that EQ had superior and more complex mechanisms to master. What made EQ was the fact that it was such a horrible time sink. Your average casual gamer played it for about a month before realizing that their leveling had slowed to a crawl and that they were doing the same thing every single fucking time they logged on. The only thing "hard" about it was mustering up the will power to waste so much of one's time.

      WoW took an entirely different path. They made the first 40 or so levels quick. You could log on for an hour each day and end that day feeling rewarded as you leveled up and moved onto different areas. WoW discovered what everyone else already knew with common sense. Casual gamers don't like games that require you to spend 40 hours a week on in order to get anywhere. It has nothing to do with complexity and difficulty, and everything to do with the amount of time you need to dump into a video game to get somewhere.

  7. Oh Noes!!! by FireIron · · Score: 1

    Tell: OMFG CN U pl my job PLZ!!!111!!!

    (Original version rejected by Slashdot lameness filter...sigh...)

    1. Re:Oh Noes!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would mod the lameness filter as insightful, if I could.

    2. Re:Oh Noes!!! by FireIron · · Score: 1

      Not if it can't detect satire, parody, or irony...

  8. Im pleased by kickedfortrolling · · Score: 1

    cos im crap at golf, but can certainly hold my own in WSG. Finally all of us un-coordinated geeks get a chance to network

    --
    --AlexC
    Just because I dont agree with climate change doesnt make me a troll
  9. Kingdom of Loathing by hobbit · · Score: 0, Offtopic


    Best... MORPG... Ever.

    http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/

    It's not exactly massively multiplayer, but it's beautifully written.

    --
    "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
    1. Re:Kingdom of Loathing by Zorikin · · Score: 1

      I think "massive" works, it's "multiplayer" that is questionable. Your main interaction with other players is through the commerce systems.

    2. Re:Kingdom of Loathing by Ayaress · · Score: 1

      Unless they've added a LOT since I quit a year ago, massive wouldn't really apply either. The game was amusing for a couple months. Then it sunk in that the game had a level of tedium to make Ultima Online's worst aspects look exciting. Not only was I fighting the exact same fight over and over and over, but the thing I was fighting was actually called "Annoying series of random enemies," dropped items litterally called "Vendor Trash," and even then, combat was a one-click thing and involved no actual actions on my part aside from one click and an occasional refresh when the encounter didn't load properly.

    3. Re:Kingdom of Loathing by Zorikin · · Score: 1

      Massive generally refers to the number of simultaneous players on a single server, not the amount of features.

    4. Re:Kingdom of Loathing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How is that different from reality?

  10. karmic retribution at lvl 60 by Zorikin · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I posted in the other story that my workplace was crawling with WoWers. We got firewalled. Now they watch FRAPS movies and look things up on thottbot.

  11. This new innovate level-free MMO already exists. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's funny that many of the new "second generation" features he mentions, are already in Eve-Online. Yet he doesn't mention it...

  12. Take it even further by KillerRobot · · Score: 1

    I think that blizzard could balance hardcore with casual by making competative cross server BGs. Esports is taking off in the FPS world, the MMORPG/RPG world should follow. PvPing takes a well coordinated team, with everyone knowing what they're doing. Tons of practice and experience. If Blizzard fixes WoW pvp, or makes it right in Diablo3, maybe we can see 3 blizzard games at the CPL next year.