I agree with everything stated about the game of Everquest in specific as stated in the original article. Especially with the advent of other online games of the same type Sony has bothered less and less to actually try and provide service to it's customers. I have no idea why anyone still plays the game as it is now, especially since if you need your "fix" you can get it in other games with much better service, gameplay, and nearly everything else.
Which brings me to my own point: It has been derived from this article, if not stated in it directly, that "If MMORPG then utter and complete disregard for you the player". I don't think that's supported by the arguments here. Everything stated about EQ is true (I have freinds who are in the "high level game" and won't quit despite hating the wastage of time, and myself I got up to 40th level a few times...which is of course not high level yet...but at any rate) for EQ, not necessarily for all other games of it's type.
For example, another game that I played for a long time and eventually quit was Dark Age of Camelot*. In essance the same kind of gameplay as EQ. You made a charachter avatar. you could have several per account. These would go forth and hunt "mobs" for items and experiance to increase levels and thus be ready for harder "mobs". There were many differances between DAoC* and EQ, including an indicator to how much experiance one was obtaining, both by easy to view bar progress and numerical breakdown (whereas in EQ one was left unsure which "mob" gave the best "xp"). Many features like this made the (still fairly tedious) level gaining part of the game easier for the player, as well as game design that made combat interactive and more complex than hitting a button and going to watch TV, all of which make it more fun and less of a chore. At earlier levels in particular one was also not as dependant on groups. Furthermore "mobs" were not as rigedly set as in EQ, so people could kill what they needed when they needed. There were several sucessful and powerful Asian guilds on the server I was a part of. To be sure there were a few very rare mobs, such as the dragons and a particular demon. On the other hand, they were not somthing one hunted to gain necessary progress as opposed to somthing done for the challange. This is because due to the fairly unique item creation options in the game, no matter how powerful an item from a mob was, and no matter what mob it came from, it would never be better than the top quality player created items of the same type. Now, it was difficult and time consuming to create these items, but people did it. Likewise, I played DAoC about half as long as I did EQ, and I reached the maximum level long before I quit, on multiple charachters. Everything in this game was less time consuming, and less frustrating without being a non-challange, than in EQ.
The guild system is very similar, but given the wide variety of mob hunting choices it was less exclusionary (less "member holding"). Furthermore guilds could ally together to form a kind of meta-guild. This had all the same kinds of social impacts, and not all of them positive, as mentioned about EQ. This is, as was later noted, due to the persistance of immature people empowered by the anonimity of the internet into being very rude and abusive. This is one thing in which I think any online interactive activity will find a problem. On the other hand the Mythic support staff (Mythic is to DAoC what Sony is to EQ) were far more willing and capable of dealing with bad players, if somewhat less harsh in their punishments. This leniancy usually led to less resentment from the peers of an offender than it did to continued abuses.
The biggest differance between the two games is that Camelot give the option of reaching an attainable goal. While it is persisnat and one could conceivably play forever, it lets one accomplish things that bring a sense of actually having done somthing. Each server has three "Realms" that a player can choose to join when he first signs up to play there. These realms offer safe areas in which to gain levels, make items, etc etc. In addition there are interconnected areas that players from all realms can enter after a certain level. Located in these areas are castle like structures that either guard key tactital points within a given area, provide supplies for things like seige engines, or at the most centrally located positions larger castles that each house one of two kinds of magical relics. Each realm starts with one each of these kind of relics, one for "strength" and one for "power" (magic power as it happens). Provided that they still posess their own relic of a given type the players from a realm can invade another realm and try to steal the matching relic type. If they can return it to their own relic castle, then their entire realm is granted a bonus for as long as they hold the relic. The other realms players can then be expected to try and take it back, albeit at a slight disadvantage as they lack the bonus given to the sucessful theives. Thus, after attaining high levels and earning respect of fellow players by being a nice and intelligent player, I was often given command over part of a player "army" for either the purpose of attacking an enemy realm or defending from such an attack against my own. This was infinitely more exciting than anything in EQ. The challange was in outthinking and out gunning other human beings directly. If my forces crushed them, they lost nothing but the miniscule cost of entering my realm...no xp or "loot" penalty, thus no discouragement from taking part in such battles. The "high level game" here was more dynamic and involved no competition from one's supposed peers. Likewise it gave each realm common enemies to fight against, rather than focusing on out leveling and out iteming the other guilds.
The game wasn't perfect. I will also say that to date all MMORPG's suffer from bugs in retail versions of the game. On the other hand, Mythic (and other companies) have shown that, with weekly, humble, messages and patches to fix known problems they are willing to listen to customer ideas, even about their own classes to some extent. There is no mysterious "vision". Not everyone is satisfied with the game 100%, to be sure, but not for lack of trying. Reading player opinions on message boards one is largely convinced that it is mostly people who want to complain uselessly that make the most noise. The real problems with the gameplay are mostly adressed quickly. In addition, players that have somthing about their charachter changed are warned ahead of time, reasons are given, and if it dosn't work out well for the majority of the players of that type, then it is often changed back, or changed again.
Also keep in mind that, as addictive a game as it was, I played it for a considerable time, had my fun, and felt that it was time to move on. Perhaps Mythic would prefer to get more of my money, but they didn't make the game more frustrating and the goals more difficult to acheive just to milk my cash. I hear similar things about other games of this type, just not of EQ. It seems that Sony, int he beginning, felt that no one else offered a service like theirs, so they were entitled to act as a monopoly. Then, when compatitors arrived, many people left EQ, and the remainder were so attached to the game that no amount of abuse or neglect would drive them away (or so one imagines "absor" and freinds must be thinking). However, not all gaming companies are this dreadful. Yes, they are about making money, and yes they have bottom lines etc. So did Atari and Nintendo. So did and do all companies, and all games that anyone plays are from such. This dosn't mean they are all terrible.
My predictions for Star Wars Galaxies, but first soms background. I hear a lot of people say that as Verrant/Sony made EQ, and Verrant (owned by Sony still) is making SWG, it will be the same game, only in space. I kind of doubt that. For one thing, Lucasarts is part of a big, nasty, money having conglomerate that has proven time and again that if somthing dosn't have good value, it can't be labled "star wars". Uncle George wouldn't have it any other way, even if he knows less than thing 1 about video games (or, for that matter, directing...but I digress). Yes, they will want to see their money, but they have a history of taking their time and making it work right rather than foisting cheap crap to gullible fools like me (it's a marketing strategy called "don't make them hate you and they might buy more later!"). Furthermore, Verrant itself is maintaining a stronger grip on this game. There are MMORPG competitors out there. SWG holds the unique edge of being Star Wars, but players can and will get their fix elsewhere if the product prooves faulty. Verrant has also obtained different developers for SWG. To say that "SWG is being made by the same people as EQ" is in fact mostly wrong. Verrant and Sony are involved, but so is Lucasarts. In addition, the actual people that make the game are entirely new. A few were from the mostly doomed Ultima Online, and have seen most of the ways a player driven online community based game can fail and aren't interested in having it happen again.
Will SWG have bugs? To be sure, but they'll probably be adressed and the fixes announced. Will it have annoying players? Well, yes. I will likewise referance Penny-Arcade. Most people are obnoxious twerps. Think on this, and try not to be one, and I promise I will too. Will there be problem x,y,or z? Maybe, but again the people who are responsible for such are much nicer this time, we can hope they are allowed to spend money to make money, as it were. If you bother to look at the SWG dev boards right now, well, if you can find the useful info amidst the amazing ocean of immature yelling and whining, you will see that the game devs are already taking player opinions into consideration. They in fact ask for feedback on ideas and there are whole forums for suggestions etc. Again, many ideas fostered there are sheer idiocy, but none of those are taken seriously. But consider this. If the devs are already *asking* for feedback and suggestions, and the game isn't even ready to be released any time soon, can you really say it's the same situation as EQ, where player feedback is ignored at best (and leads to banning of players at worst)? I think not. Things can always go south, and I reserve that the proof is in the pudding as it were, but don't prejudge SWG based on it's affiliation with Sony. Hopefully they are more of a silent partner this time around.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with everything stated about the game of Everquest in specific as stated in the original article. Especially with the advent of other online games of the same type Sony has bothered less and less to actually try and provide service to it's customers. I have no idea why anyone still plays the game as it is now, especially since if you need your "fix" you can get it in other games with much better service, gameplay, and nearly everything else.
Which brings me to my own point: It has been derived from this article, if not stated in it directly, that "If MMORPG then utter and complete disregard for you the player". I don't think that's supported by the arguments here. Everything stated about EQ is true (I have freinds who are in the "high level game" and won't quit despite hating the wastage of time, and myself I got up to 40th level a few times...which is of course not high level yet...but at any rate) for EQ, not necessarily for all other games of it's type.
For example, another game that I played for a long time and eventually quit was Dark Age of Camelot*. In essance the same kind of gameplay as EQ. You made a charachter avatar. you could have several per account. These would go forth and hunt "mobs" for items and experiance to increase levels and thus be ready for harder "mobs". There were many differances between DAoC* and EQ, including an indicator to how much experiance one was obtaining, both by easy to view bar progress and numerical breakdown (whereas in EQ one was left unsure which "mob" gave the best "xp"). Many features like this made the (still fairly tedious) level gaining part of the game easier for the player, as well as game design that made combat interactive and more complex than hitting a button and going to watch TV, all of which make it more fun and less of a chore. At earlier levels in particular one was also not as dependant on groups. Furthermore "mobs" were not as rigedly set as in EQ, so people could kill what they needed when they needed. There were several sucessful and powerful Asian guilds on the server I was a part of. To be sure there were a few very rare mobs, such as the dragons and a particular demon. On the other hand, they were not somthing one hunted to gain necessary progress as opposed to somthing done for the challange. This is because due to the fairly unique item creation options in the game, no matter how powerful an item from a mob was, and no matter what mob it came from, it would never be better than the top quality player created items of the same type. Now, it was difficult and time consuming to create these items, but people did it. Likewise, I played DAoC about half as long as I did EQ, and I reached the maximum level long before I quit, on multiple charachters. Everything in this game was less time consuming, and less frustrating without being a non-challange, than in EQ.
The guild system is very similar, but given the wide variety of mob hunting choices it was less exclusionary (less "member holding"). Furthermore guilds could ally together to form a kind of meta-guild. This had all the same kinds of social impacts, and not all of them positive, as mentioned about EQ. This is, as was later noted, due to the persistance of immature people empowered by the anonimity of the internet into being very rude and abusive. This is one thing in which I think any online interactive activity will find a problem. On the other hand the Mythic support staff (Mythic is to DAoC what Sony is to EQ) were far more willing and capable of dealing with bad players, if somewhat less harsh in their punishments. This leniancy usually led to less resentment from the peers of an offender than it did to continued abuses.
The biggest differance between the two games is that Camelot give the option of reaching an attainable goal. While it is persisnat and one could conceivably play forever, it lets one accomplish things that bring a sense of actually having done somthing. Each server has three "Realms" that a player can choose to join when he first signs up to play there. These realms offer safe areas in which to gain levels, make items, etc etc. In addition there are interconnected areas that players from all realms can enter after a certain level. Located in these areas are castle like structures that either guard key tactital points within a given area, provide supplies for things like seige engines, or at the most centrally located positions larger castles that each house one of two kinds of magical relics. Each realm starts with one each of these kind of relics, one for "strength" and one for "power" (magic power as it happens). Provided that they still posess their own relic of a given type the players from a realm can invade another realm and try to steal the matching relic type. If they can return it to their own relic castle, then their entire realm is granted a bonus for as long as they hold the relic. The other realms players can then be expected to try and take it back, albeit at a slight disadvantage as they lack the bonus given to the sucessful theives. Thus, after attaining high levels and earning respect of fellow players by being a nice and intelligent player, I was often given command over part of a player "army" for either the purpose of attacking an enemy realm or defending from such an attack against my own. This was infinitely more exciting than anything in EQ. The challange was in outthinking and out gunning other human beings directly. If my forces crushed them, they lost nothing but the miniscule cost of entering my realm...no xp or "loot" penalty, thus no discouragement from taking part in such battles. The "high level game" here was more dynamic and involved no competition from one's supposed peers. Likewise it gave each realm common enemies to fight against, rather than focusing on out leveling and out iteming the other guilds.
The game wasn't perfect. I will also say that to date all MMORPG's suffer from bugs in retail versions of the game. On the other hand, Mythic (and other companies) have shown that, with weekly, humble, messages and patches to fix known problems they are willing to listen to customer ideas, even about their own classes to some extent. There is no mysterious "vision". Not everyone is satisfied with the game 100%, to be sure, but not for lack of trying. Reading player opinions on message boards one is largely convinced that it is mostly people who want to complain uselessly that make the most noise. The real problems with the gameplay are mostly adressed quickly. In addition, players that have somthing about their charachter changed are warned ahead of time, reasons are given, and if it dosn't work out well for the majority of the players of that type, then it is often changed back, or changed again.
Also keep in mind that, as addictive a game as it was, I played it for a considerable time, had my fun, and felt that it was time to move on. Perhaps Mythic would prefer to get more of my money, but they didn't make the game more frustrating and the goals more difficult to acheive just to milk my cash. I hear similar things about other games of this type, just not of EQ. It seems that Sony, int he beginning, felt that no one else offered a service like theirs, so they were entitled to act as a monopoly. Then, when compatitors arrived, many people left EQ, and the remainder were so attached to the game that no amount of abuse or neglect would drive them away (or so one imagines "absor" and freinds must be thinking). However, not all gaming companies are this dreadful. Yes, they are about making money, and yes they have bottom lines etc. So did Atari and Nintendo. So did and do all companies, and all games that anyone plays are from such. This dosn't mean they are all terrible.
My predictions for Star Wars Galaxies, but first soms background. I hear a lot of people say that as Verrant/Sony made EQ, and Verrant (owned by Sony still) is making SWG, it will be the same game, only in space. I kind of doubt that. For one thing, Lucasarts is part of a big, nasty, money having conglomerate that has proven time and again that if somthing dosn't have good value, it can't be labled "star wars". Uncle George wouldn't have it any other way, even if he knows less than thing 1 about video games (or, for that matter, directing...but I digress). Yes, they will want to see their money, but they have a history of taking their time and making it work right rather than foisting cheap crap to gullible fools like me (it's a marketing strategy called "don't make them hate you and they might buy more later!"). Furthermore, Verrant itself is maintaining a stronger grip on this game. There are MMORPG competitors out there. SWG holds the unique edge of being Star Wars, but players can and will get their fix elsewhere if the product prooves faulty. Verrant has also obtained different developers for SWG. To say that "SWG is being made by the same people as EQ" is in fact mostly wrong. Verrant and Sony are involved, but so is Lucasarts. In addition, the actual people that make the game are entirely new. A few were from the mostly doomed Ultima Online, and have seen most of the ways a player driven online community based game can fail and aren't interested in having it happen again.
Will SWG have bugs? To be sure, but they'll probably be adressed and the fixes announced. Will it have annoying players? Well, yes. I will likewise referance Penny-Arcade. Most people are obnoxious twerps. Think on this, and try not to be one, and I promise I will too. Will there be problem x,y,or z? Maybe, but again the people who are responsible for such are much nicer this time, we can hope they are allowed to spend money to make money, as it were. If you bother to look at the SWG dev boards right now, well, if you can find the useful info amidst the amazing ocean of immature yelling and whining, you will see that the game devs are already taking player opinions into consideration. They in fact ask for feedback on ideas and there are whole forums for suggestions etc. Again, many ideas fostered there are sheer idiocy, but none of those are taken seriously. But consider this. If the devs are already *asking* for feedback and suggestions, and the game isn't even ready to be released any time soon, can you really say it's the same situation as EQ, where player feedback is ignored at best (and leads to banning of players at worst)? I think not. Things can always go south, and I reserve that the proof is in the pudding as it were, but don't prejudge SWG based on it's affiliation with Sony. Hopefully they are more of a silent partner this time around.
-JTY-