What's Next for MMO Games

I played in the Star Wars: The Old Republic beta. I had some thoughts which I started to type out here, but let’s just cut the good and bad down to, “Meh. It was okay.”  When it launched I tried making bets with people that it would be free-to-play in a year. I got a whole lecture from more than one person about how EA wouldn’t allow that because they invested so much money yadda yadda.  Even after the lecture, they wouldn’t take my bet. Nobody took my bet.

Yesterday Electronic Arts revealed in an investor call that StarWars: The Old Republic has dropped to less than a million subscribers. They also announced today that it was going free-to-play this fall.

I think we all agree that this model of MMO is dead. Even World of Warcraft’s numbers are falling (can't find the article I read that says though, sorry) and their last expansion was 'lacking the luster' in my opinion. Eventually, maybe not anytime soon, but eventually they will go free-to-play as well. They could do something amazing this next expansion, but generally I think they already peaked.

Thing is, I don’t actually think it is the pay model that is more of a problem. I think the whole ‘quest, kill monsters, grind your level up, get better gear, rinse and repeat’ thing that is the problem. Seriously, it doesn’t matter what fiction or license you wrap around your game. It doesn’t matter how great a story you have behind why some guy wants to you traipse across hostile landscape to get him some MacGuffin. None of that matters because it still gets boring after a while. It is like they say about breasts, you’ve seen one you’ve seen them both. (Note: I think that joke may have been a bit inappropriate in this context, but it just fit so well. Also I am writing this while watching a documentary about Lenny Bruce.)

 

We have got to stop thinking that these games need this horrible treadmill. The Sims Online is great example of this problem; the Sims games were a license to print money. Electronic Arts decided to make a Sims MMO. Unfortunately they tossed out everything that made the Sims fun and successful and instead put in grinding and leveling mechanics. The result was a horrible failure. I don’t think they stopped to think that people would be happy just living in an online Sim’s world with their friends.

I think it is time we go back to the sandbox approach. Looking back at the MMO’s Raph Koster was trying to make with Ultima Online and the first Star Wars MMO, Star Wars Galaxies. Those games had a lot of problems. Oh my God did they have problems. Horrible database systems, they were many exploits, and lots of bugs. I played Ultima Online and I was even a customer service representative for Star Wars: Galaxies at launch, so I could go on and on about these problems. I think the problems and bugs that these two games had caused us to abandon these types of games in favor of the leveling and grinding mechanic. Everquest came out and started eating Ultima Online’s lunch. And World of Warcraft, essentially a polished up Everquest, came out not too long after Star Wars Galaxies and ate its lunch too. It’s not too hard to see how game companies said, hey these games are doing better than those, let’s make more of these. 

Note Ultima Online is still going, now being run by Mythic. I haven't played it since Everquest came out so I have no idea what it is like now.

I want to give you two stories from Ultima Online. The first was this guy who set up a vendor outside of one of the major cities that sold the head of infamous player killers for exuberant prices. Basically, he fought player kills out in the world, won, took their heads and then sold them on this vendor. These player killers bought back their own heads because they didn’t want to be seen as somebody who got their butt kicked by this guy. How awesome is that. But look at all the game mechanics (tools and toys) that went into that:

• ·         A complex player vs. player system with reputations, where there can be player killers that prey on other players and can in return be hunted.
• ·         Having the ability to mutilate a corpse, which wasn’t a good thing either, I think there was a reputation penalty for doing that.
• ·         Having the ability to set up your own vendor in a public place that sold items to other players.

The second story is about a group called The Pacific MageTower that tried setting up a role-playing group that would generate content for other players. There were no mechanics that allowed them to do anything but they tried. These were people who just liked messing around in this virtual world. They didn’t’ want to go out and adventure. They wanted to create things for other players to do. I hung out with them for a while, but the work to fun ratio was too much for me. It was really difficult for them to do even simple events. For example, whenever they got the word out they were doing something, the player killers would hear about it to. Even having my guild, The KGB (Knights of Glory and Beer - A guild that is still active in various games btw), who were known for hunting player killers, there for protection it just wound up turning the event into a massive battlefield. Imagine if they had systems in place for people to build and create content. People love that kind of stuff. Look at Minecraft. Even as much as we make fun of Second Life, look at Second Life.

In line with that second story, let’s jump to Star Wars:Galaxies which was supposed to a sandbox game but it didn’t have any tools or toys in the sandbox. The planets were boring that just weren’t worth exploring. A sandbox isn’t fun because it is filled with sand. It is fun because you bring your toys in with you. You bring some Matchbox cars, Tonka trucks and plastic army men.  Then you build things to make playing with those toys even more fun your tools and materials. You bring in a bucket and shovel, or at least a few Dixie cups and a spoon.  You have your Legos and maybe add some Lincoln Logs. You build things with those tools, giant sand castles, that that plastic army can assault. You build ramps to jump things with your matchbox cars. Those things are what make the sandbox fun. 

There was one thing in Star Wars: Galaxies that I wanted to mention. They build this system where you got some sort of combat fatigue after a while, but if you went to a cantina were an entertainer was performing it would reduce the fatigue and it would level up the entertainer. I like that co-dependency. I heard they were building another system in there were high level crafters couldn’t make the stuff they used to make when they were low level, but they would need those things to craft higher level stuff. That way there was a market for the low level stuff and a co-dependency between the low and high level crafters.  Don’t know why it didn’t make it in, but I can imagine something like that would be hard to balance just right.  

I’m not saying that we should completely get rid of leveling and skill trees in our games, but let’s makes grinding them unnecessary. Let’s not focus on having a treadmill, but rather having a world where the player enjoyed having their character live there because there are lots of fun things for them to do and explore.

Even if we just take those concepts and ideas from Ultima Online and polishing them up, thinking them through a little better and getting rid of the exploits. Not trying to insult the people who worked on those games, they were working in the edge on the gaming frontier and praying the technology could keep up.

I would love to see us taking the things we have learned in the last 10 years, the technology advancements and give this type of MMO game another shot.

Think Things Through or Your Head Asplode!

One of the things that I think I am good at in video game design, is seeing where a certain system’s desired behavior is actually going to have a completely different outcome in game. Everybody wants to be able to get the most out of something with the least effort and players are notorious for being what we call “Min Max’ers” meaning "Minimum effort for maximum reward."

You don’t have a fee to put something up for auction in your MMO auction system? You want to be nice to the players so they participate in and stimulate your in game economy? Unfortunately, that means the auction system is going to be filled to breaking with absolute trash items; because why destroy something when there is a chance somebody will buy it for a few coins? This happened in Star Wars Galaxies. The database filled up causing it to be painfully slow, you couldn’t find anything of actual value that you may have been looking for and the auction system was useless.

They also allowed players to name their auctions. It defaulted to the name of the item you were selling but you could change it. I suppose because they felt that people could enter things like “buy my crap item cheap!” but instead players named their auctions item names of other more valuable items and scammed people. This was not helped by having crap items and very valuable items share the same inventory icon such as the Holocron which gave you a clue to unlocking your Jedi character. Oh and it didn't filter the auction name through a profanity filter the outcome of which I don't think I have to elaborate on.

Sorry didn’t mean to pick on ol’Star Wars Galaxies, but I sure wasn’t about to list examples from game’s I’ve worked on. Those are mine or my friend’s mistakes! Seriously, what were you thinking?

Anyway, the point of this post was that we are currently seeing an example of this in Utah State Senate bill HB 353. On the surface it says that retailers who advertise that they don’t sell age restricted games to minors, and are caught doing so, will be fined and opened to lawsuits. Critics point out that what will really happen is all the work the industry has being doing to promote its voluntary rating system, educating retailers, etc. will get for nothing because it will be easier (minimum effort) for retails simply to stop advertising the rating system and stop promising they won’t sell restricted games to minors. The result would be (maximum reward), no danger of falling foul of this legislation because Bob, the minimum wage clerk at the register, who really doesn’t give a damn if little Timmy buys a copy of “Headshots II: Your Head Asplode!” for his PS3 despite your advertising, company policy, and that little meeting you had.

The ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board) has written an open letter saying pretty much that which you can read over at Game Politics who has been tracking the passage of this, "feel good, oh won't somebody please remember the children, waste of tax dollars, look at what a good politician I am taking care of you, crappy legislation." It has links to the bill itself as well.

Goodbye Jeff Freeman

I just heard that Game Designer, Jeff Freeman, has committed suicide. I met Jeff a few times and didn't really know him but I read his blog often.

A lot of people blamed Jeff for the sweeping, unsold to the community and pretty much unannounced changes to Star Wars Galaxies, called the "New Game Enhancements." The NGE were supposedly put in to make the game feel more like Star Wars and less like an "Uncle Owen Simulator." This being what everybody was blaiming for the falling subscription numbers, but pissing off your remaining customers isn't always a good idea as in the MMO market when people leave they don't come back.

The blame for that failed plan which caused even more people to leave the game, isn't really something that belonged at Jeff's feet. MMO design is a huge complicated beast that takes lots of people to design and put together. Even then you still have to factor in the ideas and decisions from above.

I make no claim to know what went on at SOE when all this went down. After it happened and community went into a tissy, everybody over there went silent. The problem was there was a blog post that Jeff had made just prior to the changes going in, that even though he later deleted, was found by players.

So don't get the crazy notion that I'm "in charge" here. "The Man" is a many-headed beast called Management. I just try to help it make good decisions. With regard to game mechanics, it even lets me decide, sometimes.

So a few months ago The Man comes along and says "What can we do to make this the most fun game it can possibly be?"

It was the lead designer who holed-up in his office for a few days and then said, "Hey, come look at this."

There's no way we can do that.

There's no way we should do that.

Man that's fun.

The Man will never let us get away with doing that.

We can't do it.

We shouldn't do it.

Oh man that is fun.

When an executive producer sees something that is impossible to do, but which is too fun not to do, he makes a noise like "Hoooooooooph."

My job was to be the guy to say, "Yes we can do that." I had to say this about forty times a day for two months.

Jeff was really only even talking about the combat changes and had little to do with the rest of the NGE. But he became the face of the debacle and the players dumped on him for months and months. Even after Jeff left SOE the comments and blame followed him.

I personally think the original combat sucked big fat donkey balls and the changes Jeff put in actually made the game a lot more fun.

Jeff's brother has come out to say that the ire of the SWG community that isn't what caused him to take his own life.

"I want everyone to know that it was not SWG that led him to take his life," he said. "He has been troubled for some time. There were a lot of personal issues that tore at him."

Unfortunately this leave me with little solace and we are left with one less talented game designer. Sorry to see you go Jeff, we are lessened by your passing.

The link to Jeff's blog will remain on my list. I encourage you to read it.

Don't Employee Idiots in Customer Service

While working on Star Wars Galaxies, we had one CSR group up with her friends to power level them and turn in her daily stat sheet showing she had handled 3-4 customer petitions. This is while the rest of use were doing between 100 and 200 petitions per shift. She was nice enough to have her log file turned on though. FIRED

Then there were the two idiots who, while everybody was trying to figure out how to be the first to unlock the Jedi character slot, they unlocked the Jedi slot on their CSR accounts, ran around Bestine having a light saber duel, while at work. FIRED and FIRED

None of that really compares with the intelligence of this Age of Conan GM.

Don’t PlayNC

NCSoft has got to have THE WORST help system of any on-line game service. Okay, probably not anywhere near THE worst. SoE certainly wasn’t an award winner for SWG at its launch, but NCSoft certainly does love making you jump through hoops and they have had over four years to actually get some tools in place.

I recently bought Tabula Rasa. In order to play it I have to have a Master PlayNC account. I do have a Master PlayNC account that I created almost four years ago in early 2004 when I played City of Heroes. Unfortunately, none of my standard passwords seem to be correct. I also love how they get you with the too many attempts thing right off the bat. You know how most systems allow you to attempt to enter your password a few times before they say something and make you wait awhile before you can try again? Well PlayNC does that after the first try.

Too many failed login attempts, login temporarily disabled. Please try again in a few minutes.

Granted the wait time is only like 2 minutes before you can try again, but what a pain in the ass especially if you just made a typo.

I try to use their lost password feature. It pops up two security questions that I am assuming I picked way back when. It also has one of those annoying ‘type in the letters you see that are distorted, hard to read and partly hidden on this noisy background image’ things that all appear to be coded to just reject your first attempt out of hand. The questions are “What was the color of my first car” and “What was my childhood nickname.” I enter the answers and am told I’m wrong.
Funny that I have a color picture of said car right here and am still haunted by that cruel nickname. The only recourse I am given is that I have to contact support. No link, just told that is what I have to do.

Under the ‘Help’ link on the side menu I find a ‘Support Center’ link, enter ‘Lost Password’ in the search field and get an entry titled “PlayNC Support - What should I do if I think I have been hacked?”

Okay, lets try, “Forgot Password”… okay that came up with a few, one of which is “I forgot my PlayNC master account password.” It gives me the same spiel about going to the lost password link and if I have updated my account and added the security questions that I need to answer them but if I haven’t updated it then I need to just enter my date of birth. Note to self, in the future don’t update and add the questions I won’t remember the answer to in four years.

At the bottom it has another link. “I can't use the FORGOT PASSWORD feature because I cannot remember some of the required information.” Why this link isn’t included on the actual Lost Password page I don’t know.

That page tells me to use the “Ask a Question” link and paste in the following into the form:

Subject:
I forgot my PlayNC master account password and I can't reset it using the FORGOT PASSWORD feature.
Question:
Here is my account information:
PlayNC master account name: ENTER ACCOUNT NAME HERE
First and last name: ENTER FIRST AND LAST NAME HERE
Physical Address: ENTER POSTAL MAILING ADDRESS (not e-mail address) HERE
Date of birth: ENTER DATE OF BIRTH HERE
Serial codes/access keys: ENTER CODES/KEYS HERE
Unique Account ID(s): ENTER UNIQUE ACCOUNT ID(s) HERE

Now the problem with all these is I have moved around a bit and there are 5 possible postal addresses I may have used when I first signed up for the account: My house in Vegas, my mother’s house in Vegas (my main U.S. mailing address), my work address, my original apartment when I first moved to Australia or my current apartment.

The Serial Codes and Unique Account IDs are the game code and account names used on previous PlayNC games. I haven’t a clue. I played several of their games but when I stopped, I canceled the accounts. I don’t have that information. (Actually I do as I am very anal about that sort of thing, but let’s pretend I’m a normal person who doesn’t keep game boxes for more than a few years after they’ve stopped playing them. And that they don’t keep game activation code emails buried in some folder in their inbox. Or at least pretend I’m just too lazy to go out into the box in storage where those old game boxes are which is probably a lot easier.) I wrote that I have no active accounts for those two entries.

I got back an email saying that some of my information in incorrect or inaccurate. To assist them further I need to provide them with additional information. They do apologize for what appears to be additional steps. I am told not to reply to the email but rather to go to a link to update my support reqest. This link takes me to their Knowledge Base support page. At this page I am asked for my email address and a password. I wanted to write back, thanking them for their time but informing them that I was going to return Tabula Rasa to the store.

I can’t however as I have no password for their knowledge base page. I am pretty sure I was never asked to create one. Just now in writing this post I have actually retraced my steps to creating this customer service request. I have looked at the original email they auto-sent me when I entered the customer service request and all over this current one. Both say that if I need to update my request to go to that link but neither give any indication of a password. And this email also says if they don’t hear back from me in 72 hours they will assume the issue has been resolved. Not letting the customers answer back is a nice way to get their customer support resolved issues scores up.

Looking back through the PlayNC email crap I have kept. I do have one regarding why I quite City of Heroes. Petition: “Falling Forever: Walked into a building for a mission and fell through the world. I am still falling. /stuck does nothing.”

I remember that I waited online for quite awhile but never got a response. Tried logging off and back on and was still falling. I got this email three days later, “My apologies, but I am not able to find your hero online at the moment. Unfortunately, we can only assist you on this issue while your hero is logged in. Next time you log in with this hero, please reply back to this email letting us know that you are online, and we will get to you as quickly as we can. You may continue to play, and we will find you in the game when we get to your petition.”

This is why I was working to get macro programs banned from SWG customer service. I may not continue to play as falling forever is not what I consider ‘playing’ and I certainly wasn’t about to spend three more days doing it. If somebody had to actually type an answer to that it would probably have more to do to address my problem than suggest that I log in, write them email, then sit there for hours while waiting for them to come to my aid.

The real end to this story is I have another PlayNC account. I created a second one way back when because of this same problem. I was only jumping through these hoops because A. I wanted to complain about them and B. I would prefer to have the other account name as it is my standard one I always use for MMOs. Seriously, if they want you to maintain a master account and not make a new one for each new game, they need to smooth this process out.

It does annoy the piss out of me that they don’t just do the standard “mail the password to the email address on file” like the rest of the world does. I would only need to contact customer support if I had changed my email address or something. They certainly don’t seem to have a problem spamming my email with crap about how they keep re-activating my various game accounts for their ‘special’ weekends to get me to come back.

I wonder if my CoH character is still falling?

CDC Games Invests in Auran

This story has been going around the business news wires:

BEIJING, China --(Business Wire)-- CDC Games, a business unit of CDC Corporation (NASDAQ: CHINA) and pioneer of the "free-to-play, pay-for-merchandise" model for online games in China, announced today it has signed a definitive agreement to invest in Auran, a leading developer of online games in Australia.

READ MORE

What I love is this bit that always gets included in Auran press releases:

About Auran
Established in 1995, Auran is one of Australia's oldest and largest game studios and has won numerous technology awards. Boasting a team of internationally experienced developers, Auran's staff have worked on a titles including: Asheron's Call 1 & 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, Mythica, Middle Earth Online, Need for Speed Underground, Magic and Mayhem and many more.

See that "Star Wars Galaxies"? They have that in there because of me even though I really didn't work on Star Wars Galaxies. I was a CSR for Star Wars Galaxies for about 8 months back at launch between EA's closing of Westwood and starting at Auran. I was trying to get onto the Everquest dev team and my friend Shawn Lord at SOE recommended that I could easily get my foot in the door through the CSR department. He said that is where most of the Everquest designers had come from at that point. Anyway, I have brought up several times that the Star Wars Galaxies listing should be replaced by one of the other billion games I've worked on but there it is again. Come on, wouldn't you be more impressed by something like Command & Conquer than Star Wars Galaxies anyway? Lets face it, Star Wars Galaxies sucked.

Actually I just got an "Eye of the Beholder" fan mail yesterday from a girl named Irene. Thats right, a girl! I showed her where I hid my name in the artwork. :-)