Guild Wars 2

A great read to help reflect truly the direction of this genre, in particular some of the practices done in modern “AAA” mmorpg’s, and to further narrow that scope with the Guild Wars 2 we see today.

How can success be measured in a mmo? Is it the nostalgic 7million clinging to a king? Is it measured in quarterly reports and revenue gains through the easy credit card click? Is it the hype and marketing for the flash in the pan forgotten profit monsters? Do we call it a “niche” game, or “I find it appealing and that’s all that counts” hold any merit?

GW2 came to mind as one of my favorite mmo’s to date; its current vision, and the ripple effect it has as a whole shaping gamers and the industry today.

Is the big bad greedy publishers at fault? or the gamers that have facilitated the scenario we see today?

“I wanted people to have some indication of their own personal merit, based on what they did, rather than where they were born. It’s why I’m not a fan of free-to-play games in which you can simply buy progress.”

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-10-30-the-utopia-that-never-died

The article sets off my BS detector: the guy interviewed claims to have invented the MUD pretty much by itself, but fails to mention that the earliest MUDs were computer emulations of Dungeons and Dragons. D&D was developed a few years before he claims to have invented MUDs in the USA and is responsible for many aspects he claims to have invented, including the themes of exploration and killing enemies, experience, levels and classes, and even the “Dungeons” the genre was named for.

He didn’t invent any of these things, they were borrowed from existing games. The whole claim that he envisioned them as some kind of idealized society and a political protest is just BS.

tolunart.2095:

The article sets off my BS detector: the guy interviewed claims to have invented the MUD pretty much by itself, but fails to mention that the earliest MUDs were computer emulations of Dungeons and Dragons. D&D was developed a few years before he claims to have invented MUDs in the USA and is responsible for many aspects he claims to have invented, including the themes of exploration and killing enemies, experience, levels and classes, and even the “Dungeons” the genre was named for.

He didn’t invent any of these things, they were borrowed from existing games. The whole claim that he envisioned them as some kind of idealized society and a political protest is just BS.

Agreed. The article is nonsense. Please lock this thread.

No need to lock this thread. I think Bartle’s vision for the mmo community is far more important to talk about rather than the debating whether or not he was the inventor of MUDs.

Powerful article OP, I hope others take their time to read it.

I believe that Bartle is telling us that his vision for mmos was a place where people could gather and interact without caring or knowing about others’ social stigmas. This absence creates a “metaphysical” world where people can pursue what they want to do rather than worrying about what people want them to become.

To some extent, Bartle’s vision has become a reality. People interact with each other regularly to accomplish tasks. People can play as avatars far differently from their perceived outward personalities. Players can also be exposed to arguments they usually would not partake in during their daily jobs. However, none of this occurs unless people are invested in the game.

Gw2 saw a wonderful innovative release that promised a vast evolving world. The company also had a legacy built upon the successes of the “niche” game Gw1 that delivered rich lore and large scale content consistently through expansions. When released, Gw2 delivered their game in a successful manner as it would forgo the traditional gear treadmill. People were engaged in exploring the land and were rewarded by doing so. Map completion was exciting and people often were motivated to attempt crafting a legendary as this was one of the first steps in completing those coveted weapons.

Endgame was not as absent as people initially thought. There were different armor sets to accumulate, materials to farm for mystic forage recipes and legendries and pvp for those who wished to compete. These elements combined engaged the player in a unique way most mmos did not. The problems was that the core mechanics began to stale as the company promised updates which fell short of their original goals. The development team for dungeons was disbanded, promises of legendary armor and precursor scavenger hunts never came true, and pvp remained largely ignored at its core. These issues were continually evaded as the living story began to take over arena net’s development cycle.

While sounding promising, the living story delivered poor narrative and meaningless content. The veteran base seemed to be getting increasingly frustrated. More importantly, the living story began to seem like it was a façade that was constructed to keep players’ attentions away from the core issues at hand requiring more effort and money to fix.

To answer the OP, I believe that Gw2 has become a product of publisher influence and greed. Observe the current situation. The gemstore update was claimed to have made obtaining gems easier, yet most of the player basis preferred the older system. Additionally, the September quality of life patch centered on making the personal story “easier.” This seemed like a blatant move against the veteran population as it ignored the fact that no actual game content had been released and gave priority to new players’ interest.

In summary, I think both Arena Net and NCsoft have planned a successful business strategy that is reliant on casual players as well as newcomers. Since this clientele progresses through content so slowly, the living story and quality of life patches feel adequate to them. To the veteran players, content seems lackluster and avoidant of fundamental additions.

Nannernut.3460:

snip*

Well written and thought through, thanks for the share.

It would be nice if new, casual, and veteran players all felt they had a place in Tyria. I think GW2 success, and the content produced over that life cycle will depend on that.

The way I look at success seems very distant to what NCsoft/Anet view as success though.

It is interesting to think about the contrast. Here is Bartle, a man for whom changing the world and removing class/social inequality is part of his dream. And then on the other hand, you have businesspeople, whose dreams may just as easily be filled with dollar signs as making an impact on the world.

And I think that a lot of developers low on the totem pole are not so different from Bartle in their goals. But they are sometimes stopped short with the funds and tools available to them.

The plus side is, I think some of Bartle’s dream has been realized. I know that my life was impacted strongly by my experiences in MMOs. And I’ve heard the stories of people who became empowered in ways that they wouldn’t otherwise have had, or met some of their best friends or spouse through an MMO.

On the other hand, you can see in games like this one that the model is moving somewhat away from the meritocracy idea that Bartle supported. Things like the gem store, although they (quite fairly) keep these games afloat, move into that realm where certain types of progress or achievement are easier if have greater monetary power in the real world.

In fact, I suspect the most fundamental part of things like gem stores that MMO players despise is that these stores are a perpetual breaking of the fourth wall. We come into these virtual worlds to escape from reality and models that use something like a gem store are a constant reminder that the real world is lurking out there and it has an impact on our virtual experience.

I’m not decrying the model as a whole, mind you. I understand the trends of the industry and the reasoning behind many companies adopting such models. But I can’t help noticing its flaws. I would rather I could just forget that it’s there, or see it as an inherent part of the virtual world. Yet I know that it’s ultimately not.

I guess what I’m seeing now that I couldn’t vocalize before is that these stores are not the game; they are the real world creeping in. And that’s what will forever bug me about them. And I imagine it’s what bugs a lot of people about them.

It’s the same in every creative industry. Every, single one.

The problem is, there’s less slots for creative people than there are creative people. A lot less slots. So you have editors who get 1200 submissions a month and can publish 5 books. That’s 1195 books rejected every month. And the books that editors buy are almost always going to be from names they know.

How does this relate to games? You have X number of people who actually want to be game designers, but they don’t have the money or the influence to actually make a huge gaming company. To some degree, kickstart has had an affect and independent games now have a chance, but even then, very few independent games are hugely successful, though many make enough sales to justify their creation.

MMOs, unfortunately, have become big business. That means a lot of years and a big bankroll for a AAA MMO. That means years of not making money while you pay developers, rent, voice actors and whatever else you need. It’s not so easy to make MMOs, which is why almost all of them run out of money and have to launch early. They’re expensive and ambitious.

I think the author of this article is one of the artists. It’s the difference between the publishing industry in the 60s and the publishing industry now. It’s big business and the suits have moved in.

It’s all nice in theory. In practice, developers generally can’t fund their own games…and those that can fund them aren’t often visionaries.

If anything I would call Barlte’s ideal to be unrealistic and short sighted.

There is talk about being free from social stigmas and their constraints, but those stigmas aren’t always the bad thing. For example, in the real world, it is a punishable offense to follow some around yelling obscenities at them for 4 hours straight. And yet, this is something I’ve seen frequently in MMOs. Hell, I’ve even seen it encouraged in MMOs, since these players will gather together like roving packs of animals and collectively feed off of the victims of their collected harassment.

To be true to oneself is to be at one’s most evil. While I was quite a bit late to the emergence of MMOs, history as I have seen it has shown the games becoming more restrictive after the realization that people won’t govern themselves given a universe with no laws. Likewise, with the way games are structured, the person with the most “merit” is often obsessive, controlling overachievers who pride themselves on their virtual numbers, creating a world in which the most prominent players are also the most hostile and disagreeable.

The idea of a utopia is all well and good, but it is ill informed when confronted with two facts of life: There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and human nature is to be flawed.

Having been around MMOs since the late 90s, there’s very few games that get things ‘right’. Jagex did great with Runescape for a while but failed to continue providing (I still believe RS has the greatest questing system of any MMO). WoW came along and made a lot of noise and became the industry standard. The first iteration of FF14 showed us what not to do.

GW2 also does a lot right as an MMO. It is the game setting industry standards today with the combat and fast travel system, not new, but changed enough to be as convenient as possible and responsive as possible.

Updates might be slow, but a lot of that is being compared to games still following the WoW model, while GW2 is on a completely different content delivery model. Just look at Nexon’s Maplestory and their attempt at living world, taking 6-8 months before releasing anything substantial, while recycling older content as fillers, a schedule that seems to be pretty consistent with GW2. Nexon also had a lot longer to produce enough content to start recycling.

All in all, I don’t think the apple has fallen too far with GW2. The game aims to put everyone on an equal footing, allowing the different types of MMO gamers to mix while being pretty successful at catering to all of them, with only a minority having consumed the content at such a pace that they get bored with the slower than average content updates.