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LOTRO Dev Talks About Bringing MMOs To Consoles
Jeffrey Steefel, executive producer for Lord of the Rings: Online recently spoke to Eurogamer about the game's upcoming expansion and its future in the MMO market. One thing he mentions is the challenge of designing an MMO for consoles, which have a larger player base than PC games. He admits that UI development would be a huge issue, but also thinks MMOs could benefit from splitting tasks between various devices.
"Long term, for me, the real exciting vision is ... thinking about a game, a franchise, as this centralised content. There's this thing called Lord of the Rings that sits on a bunch of servers ... and whether you're on your PC, your console, your mobile device, those are all just access points, and they're all good at different things. ... The console is great for fast action, immediate activities. Combat, raids, things like that could be a lot of fun sitting on your couch. And some things that are necessary but slightly rote and boring, like managing your inventory or setting up for a raid, or some elements of crafting — those are things that you can do instead of playing Bejeweled when you're sitting on the train or on a break or whatever it happens to be."
I haven't played WoW very seriously, but from what I've seen, at least some classes need to be pretty focused, and have quite a lot of things to keep track of -- more buttons than exist on any console controller.
I guess I don't see how raids from your couch would be fun. After all, MMOs aren't the only genre that a keyboard and mouse is better for -- and especially if you're actually fighting other humans, why would you deliberately cripple yourself?
I can see exploration from the couch, or soloing.
Good idea, though, with the "centralized content" -- not entirely original, but good to see it catching on.
Then again, I'm really not sure I want to see people inevitably logging in just to text... txtspk is even worse than 13-year-old WoW griefers, if that's possible.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I haven't played LotRO, but from what I hear its interface closely mirrors the WoW interface which would make it pretty much unplayable without a keyboard/mouse setup. Movement and using different skills are such a large part of both games and being unable to have precise control over both ends up making things ridiculously difficult in some PvE encounters and most PvP settings.
Entering text would be a complete pain in the ass and unless LotRO has built in voice support that everyone uses the console version would suffer due to a lack of Ventrilo or Team Speak support as voice communication is fairly vital in executing raid encounters. I suppose it could be included with the game, but that means getting it to work on both or either the PS3 and Xbox 360 and all the additional hassles that go along with that.
It'd probably work out decent for solo play where one joystick controls character movement, while the other moves the camera and cursor, and commonly used abilities are mapped to buttons. From my experience when I was grinding while playing WoW I never really used more than one or two abilities. There's probably a lot of other things that I'm overlooking, but as I haven't played this particular game, my knowledge is a little general.
It seems like something that won't draw a lot of additional subscribers and will probably end up costing more to develop and implement so that it works well than they'll see returned in increased revenue. I'm not saying that a console MMO couldn't be done, but it would need to either solve the problems I mentioned above by adding good voice chat functionality and allowing keyboard and mouse input or be designed from the group up with console controllers in mind.
Don't be intentionally stupid. The game is built by a set of humans collectively organized into a business. They not only do try to do something besides sit there and ask you to play, but in the case of the majors, they have a legal requirement (to their public shareholders) to encourage you to become completely addicted to the game so that you keep playing and keep paying.
MMO games are addiction machines. This article points out just one of the slippery slopes they try to grease to get you to invest so much that it is psychologically damaging to play.
As for moderation, I played WoW for years, and the one thing I noticed in that time was there were very few people playing "in moderation". The prices at the auction houses, the time it took to accomplish any goals, and the lack of any punctuated content meant that you had two paths - play til you got bored, or play constantly (definition in this particular case: 20+ hours a week).
I don't know who your "everyone" includes, but the stories I heard from the players I met - in real life I'm talking, not in game - were all at least that deep in the game. It's how the thing is made - there's a stack of shit ten miles deep that the developers are trying to bog you down with in the name of "pacing mechanisms" and "meaningful progression". In the end, it's timesink so that you keep playing and keep filling their pockets.
Punctuated content, on the other hand, should take the line that a person can accomplish a complete task in a set time period, and there are limits to how much an individual can crank through in a given time period. Think movies versus TV. You go to a movie and you pay your fee, then two hours later you're done. You sit down in front of a TV and nine hours later you stand up and crack your back and realize it's dark outside and your life is passing you by.
Not what everyone wants. But holy christ, come on. These guys are suggesting that you could do part of the artificial shitty task list they've made up for you in your free time. If that doesn't sound ridiculous to you, you're a little crazy.
"MMO games are addiction machines."
Guild Wars seems to have done OK without a permanent grind; I'm sure they haven't made as much money as WoW with its monthly fees, but I'm equally sure they've made a decent profit.
Actually their ideal situation is probably that you keep paying WITHOUT playing (too much). That way their content doesn't get old so fast, the resources required to run the game aren't as high, etc. etc.