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**Kradath** · 01-15-2009, 02:05 AM

Re: A guide to help your MMORPG not fail fast

Originally posted by Boreas

i decided to make a list seeing as im continually getting frustrated with mmorpgs out there. Please keep in mind, This is my opinion on what i have seen through all the years i have Gamed. any QQing about how that No name Japanese MMO you have been playing for 3 months is awesome will get you a FAILrar picture.(also, i will be bringing up WoW about 1 trillion times seeing as it is a perfect example at how good mmos are going to get [minus a few aspects]) Anywho, here we go.

To start with saying WoW being the best MMO, uuuuuurgh. ;p

1. "Stylized Realism"
-in the Star Wars: The Old Republic trailer, they explain that they used "Stylized Realism" to make their MMO timeless. This is a GREAT idea. Realism is great and all...For an FPS. The whole point of MMORPGs are to delve you into another universe and story. Most companies completely trash the realism aspect anyway, Having everything look like how they think a "Perfect world" would look (I.E. Very Sharp edged scenery, Cluttered Sections of maps, and some crappy Sky texture). I personally believe that if it truly fits the story, it will work. Wow, For instance, is based off of Wc3 and in Wc3 the graphics were extremely cartoony. The whole point of WoW was to bring you into Wc3 to a very personal level. Guild wars graphics works seeing as they atleast make a fitting story line and make it look good. There is also a kind of conflicting item here...How realistic can it get when you go to the edge of a town, talk to a guy, and go out and kill about 7 fairies that sit precariously right outside the city gates? A flying example at crap realism is a game called "Martial Heroes" [media]http://www.martialheroes.eu/image/00044/m5article/Small-Screen-2.jpg[/media]

For the most I agree here, some MMOs feel unnecessary unrealistic -even for a fantasy world- by some aspects, but in the end every style should be different. There is not ONE single style every MMO should have and even unrealism fits into the atmosphere sometimes. I don't want to have totally bombastic graphics in MMOs, maybe mostly I'm a pvp player and performance is way more important than graphics for me.

By the way I heard that you're able to kill epic heroes of the storyline in wow now? I mean, wtf? ;p

2. Storyline
-Most MMOs nowadays have storylines that have to do with a couple dragons, some demon, and maybe a hero or two...this is a formula for fail. When you are coming up with a story, please make something that seems like it is happening as you are playing the game...Think about it. In WoW, Its either A. Scourge is after you right now, B. Burning legion is after you right now, or C. Scourge is again after you right now but more scary. even in guild wars Factions, Shiro Tagachi is about to destroy everything you hold sacred. im also going to add in 2 more related sections, A. dont make the story line as if you created the name of the MMO and then made the story (I.E. 9Dragons) and B. Dont make it so that to get the whole story, you have to go to the MMO website and read the 9 page long "Story" section. Another Representative of fail is the MMO 9Dragons http://9dragons.acclaim.com/dragons-immoralmonk.html

You go deep into the matter here as not every game is based on epic stories and some simply don't need to be. But in general if there's a story it is better to be told ingame, the best example of how you should do it is in WAR.

3. Free To Play
-To truly achieve awesomeness, You must create an MMO that is free to play. WoW is no exception. although i do believe WoW is by far the best MMORPG, the paying monthly deal is fail up the hole. But what is the ultimate of fail in this department is allowing a free section of the game, but another section for "Members". Why make almost half of your fan base feel like a smacktard for not forking up the dough? Thats like a system where you get laughed at if you dont have the cash. A heap of FAILrar for this is the Game Runescape http://runescape.com/members/members.ws

This is absolutely fail. Have you ever compared the flowing content of a f2p and a p2p mmo? A company like Mythic or Blizzard could never keep up the servers if they made their games for free. P2p and f2p hit completely different targeting groups. p2p is for those who want a content over time, much place on their servers and other benefits. f2p is mainly focused on the asian market with their little ingame stores and so on. This just wouldn't work for the bigger mmos, the developer teams being tremendously larger.

Well, what about Guild Wars? This works, because it is instanced, what makes the game less serverkilling, you nevertheless need to buy the game and well, it is the only bigger f2p mmo on the market, the concept wouldn't work anymore, if they had more f2p competition. They've released a great amount of Addons as well to get their money flowing.

So in this point you're totally wrong.

4. Sequels
-A. Less of them B. Make them actually good. WoW failed (yes, actually failed) by making TBC and WotLK too close together...They released info about WotLK like a month after TBC was on the go and i personally believe that TBC Ruined the feel of the game...One of the main keys was to make everything worth playing, but When TBC came out, Whats the point of raiding Ragnaros? i believe they did a little better with WotLK seeing as they add TONS of more story and actually let you decide on which side you wanted to be on. A whole pile of :Antiawes is the series GW, Releasing 3 Completely separate sequels in 2 years and an Expansion pack on the third. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_Wars#Campaigns

I think there's nothing bad about expansion packs. You describe the wow expansion packs as being bad, that does not mean that expansion packs in general are bad. Expansion packs allow the developers to add in a massive amount of content which wouldn't be possible in the regelur updates.

I'm a fan of expansion packs and DLC as long as they are worth their money. Look at SWG Jump to Lightspeed, that was an extremely great expansion pack and everybody bought it.

5. Immersion
-This is probably the number one argument for why WoW is great. WoW makes you actually feel like your killing off an entire race of baddies. Certain other games make you seem like your just there for the companies benefit (i guess it also doesn't help the the story lines are trash). A Hell-Sent version of bad immersion is the game 2moons http://2moons.acclaim.com/2mlanding5.html (although 2moons is possibly my top rated free mmorpgs [thats not alot to say of course])

I didn't feel into the game as I played the trial of wow. :|
Kill this, kill that, go there and so on, the questlogs weren't interesting at all and not that good written. I asked someone a question and he told me to shut up...that was it with the immersion, never played again.

A great part of the WoW community kills this for me and that is the truth, even my friends who played the game for many years admit that.

So to sum it up in mathematical terms "Crap graphics" + "Crap Storyline" + "Pay to Play" + " More than 1 sequel every 2 years" + "No immersion" = Fail(Program this into your graphing calculators if you have to)...I just felt that i needed to rant cause im really starting to get annoyed...If you guys would like me to go more in-depth (I.E. Customization) leave a note in your post. Thanks :thumbsup:

For me the important parts of MMOs look a bit different, its not about graphics, it is about atmosphere and you can achieve that well even with bad graphics.
I wouldn't say storyline in general, because not every MMO needs a massive story, but an introduction into the world helps the player, basically you're right here.
Your whole f2p point is nonsense.

The Expansion pack point is nonsense as well. Exp packs are great, as long as they are worth it, sometimes they tear the community apart, so the devs should be sure to bring something that's worth it.
Another big aspect is for me the community. This one can really well decide if you like the game or not. If there are nothing but idiots it kills the fun pretty well.

**Numptie** · 01-15-2009, 03:06 AM

Re: A guide to help your MMORPG not fail fast

to some extent i agree with what boreas has said, and agree with some of kradath's points. what annoyed me with wow was the fact that no matter how many 'monstors' you killed in an area they stayed there, and the fact there wasn't any skill to it, apart from getting 'rotations' sorted out.

im going to try http://www.darkfallonline.com when its released. im very interested in this, because there are some things that attract me, for example "all items in the world can be made by the players." so no more 'grinding' to get one item like in wow. "the weather is more than just window dressing." seems father interesting, like arrows have shorter range/less accurate in strong wind or rain.
"Fight on horseback during a cavalry charge, participate in a naval battle, fight from vehicles and control siege and heavy weapons." ive always liked the idea of mounted combat and "There are no safe zones in Darkfall. The only protection you can count on is your friends watching your back." brilliant for those or want to be mean gits, kill anyone anywhere

from the forums that i read a year or so ago, they were saying how the only way to be stealthy is by using the land to your advantage, none of this invisible rubbish, and how the combat was close to Mount And Blades combat (http://www.taleworlds.com/), seems like a lot of fun to me, but we will have to wait and see.

tl:dr Darkfall may be good enough to match wow(not kill)

**Lt.Hanley** · 01-15-2009, 06:28 AM

Re: A guide to help your MMORPG not fail fast

I don't get why people say that TBC and WOTLk killed Wow tbh. Now i never played it before those two in fact i started quite when it was deep in TBC content. My point is that it was change your just afraid of it really. Both added tons of new content to the game. And i agree completely that Expansion packs work extremely well for MMOs and RTSs imo. I am on same page wit hthe free to play thing to. If bliz wasnt getting any money to do server fix ups every tuesday. Those things would be lagging pieces of horse****.

**Boreas** · 01-15-2009, 11:07 AM

Re: A guide to help your MMORPG not fail fast

@Kradath

To start with saying WoW being the best MMO, uuuuuurgh. ;p

As i said, my opinion. I personally believe WoW is the best its going to get.

For the most I agree here, some MMOs feel unnecessary unrealistic -even for a fantasy world- by some aspects, but in the end every style should be different. There is not ONE single style every MMO should have and even unrealism fits into the atmosphere sometimes. I don't want to have totally bombastic graphics in MMOs, maybe mostly I'm a pvp player and performance is way more important than graphics for me.

By the way I heard that you're able to kill epic heroes of the storyline in wow now? I mean, wtf? ;p

I agree that there should be some individualism. That was a Fail on my part. As for the realism, i believe i was right. If your gonna do it, do it right.

This is absolutely fail. Have you ever compared the flowing content of a f2p and a p2p mmo? A company like Mythic or Blizzard could never keep up the servers if they made their games for free. P2p and f2p hit completely different targeting groups. p2p is for those who want a content over time, much place on their servers and other benefits. f2p is mainly focused on the asian market with their little ingame stores and so on. This just wouldn't work for the bigger mmos, the developer teams being tremendously larger.

Well, what about Guild Wars? This works, because it is instanced, what makes the game less serverkilling, you nevertheless need to buy the game and well, it is the only bigger f2p mmo on the market, the concept wouldn't work anymore, if they had more f2p competition. They've released a great amount of Addons as well to get their money flowing.

So in this point you're totally wrong.

I absolutely agree with the Underlined area But, Blizzard will always have a fault with the money...There will always be people saying "15 a month is too much". I understand it would create problems in the company but, this is the way i truly believe you can become better. I also dont want the ingame stores...Annoying as hell

I think there's nothing bad about expansion packs. You describe the wow expansion packs as being bad, that does not mean that expansion packs in general are bad. Expansion packs allow the developers to add in a massive amount of content which wouldn't be possible in the regelur updates.

I'm a fan of expansion packs and DLC as long as they are worth their money. Look at SWG Jump to Lightspeed, that was an extremely great expansion pack and everybody bought it.

This is going to Kradath first, then i will address Lt_Hanley. I think xpacs are awesome, i love em. But what sucks is when you love the feel of the game and then they come out with an expansion. (this is to Lt_Hanley) For instance, i have been playing WoW since the beginning (i stopped payment about a year ago) and it was awesome. It was the first of its kind (well, technically Everquest did it first but this was by far the largest) and it was great to be actually playing inside Wc3. All the guys from the story was there, and it wasnt that hard to get better gear. When they released TBC, it was cool at first. You know, you get excited whenever something new pops up. But after a little bit, We started realizing things. A. There was almost no reason to go back to azeroth(Absolutely destroying the feel that the first game created), B. No matter how hard you were working at getting that really good epic from AQ, Some Jerkface could do like a handfull of quests in Outland and get something better to destroy you with. So it just really destroyed the feel of the original game. And when they added in heroic, i dont even think that helped the problem. as for WotLK, It might have been released in january in 2007, but it felt pretty quick to say the least, Seeing as wow was open for about 3 years before the expansion.

I didn't feel into the game as I played the trial of wow. :|
Kill this, kill that, go there and so on, the questlogs weren't interesting at all and not that good written. I asked someone a question and he told me to shut up...that was it with the immersion, never played again.
A great part of the WoW community kills this for me and that is the truth, even my friends who played the game for many years admit that.

My Opinion is that it is great immersion. IDK if that was just the server you were on, they do have RP servers that should be much more immersed in gameplay. but i think that compared to games like 2moons (where you can setup a store, and theres actually text of what your selling about your head) This game is immersive.

For me the important parts of MMOs look a bit different, its not about graphics, it is about atmosphere and you can achieve that well even with bad graphics.
I wouldn't say storyline in general, because not every MMO needs a massive story, but an introduction into the world helps the player, basically you're right here.
Your whole f2p point is nonsense.
The Expansion pack point is nonsense as well. Exp packs are great, as long as they are worth it, sometimes they tear the community apart, so the devs should be sure to bring something that's worth it.
Another big aspect is for me the community. This one can really well decide if you like the game or not. If there are nothing but idiots it kills the fun pretty well.

I believe your right about the atmosphere. The only problem i have with that is that i believe graphics contribute hugely to atmosphere. If GWs looked like wow, it would be much less of a serious game.

So all in all, i admit i do have some faults. so...yea...

**RYKUU** · 01-15-2009, 05:14 PM

Re: A guide to help your MMORPG not fail fast

2. Storyline
-Most MMOs nowadays have storylines that have to do with a couple dragons, some demon, and maybe a hero or two...this is a formula for fail. When you are coming up with a story, please make something that seems like it is happening as you are playing the game...Think about it. In WoW, Its either A. Scourge is after you right now, B. Burning legion is after you right now, or C. Scourge is again after you right now but more scary. even in guild wars Factions, Shiro Tagachi is about to destroy everything you hold sacred. im also going to add in 2 more related sections, A. dont make the story line as if you created the name of the MMO and then made the story (I.E. 9Dragons) and B. Dont make it so that to get the whole story, you have to go to the MMO website and read the 9 page long "Story" section. Another Representative of fail is the MMO 9Dragons http://9dragons.acclaim.com/dragons-immoralmonk.html

I play wow now over FPS's due to my friends playing it with me, what you said in that bolded section is essentially what wow is about, killing ghouls, people and monsters.

**KillerStickMan** · 01-16-2009, 12:04 AM

Re: A guide to help your MMORPG not fail fast

Originally posted by Boreas

4. Sequels
-A. Less of them B. Make them actually good. WoW failed (yes, actually failed) by making TBC and WotLK too close together...They released info about WotLK like a month after TBC was on the go and i personally believe that TBC Ruined the feel of the game...One of the main keys was to make everything worth playing, but When TBC came out, Whats the point of raiding Ragnaros? i believe they did a little better with WotLK seeing as they add TONS of more story and actually let you decide on which side you wanted to be on. A whole pile of :Antiawes is the series GW, Releasing 3 Completely separate sequels in 2 years and an Expansion pack on the third. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_Wars#Campaigns

I just want to defend GW in saying that the reason why they released so many expansion packs was to keep the game free. If you noticed they released an expansion pack in about the same amount of time that it would take Blizz to put out a major DL update. So really you're getting the same amount or even more content as Blizz gives you for half the price ($50 every 6 months or $15*6=$90). Although I have to say that Blizz has done an outstanding job in keeping new content and interesting content coming, I don't think it can compare to GW giving a new type of PvP, 2 new classes and a new storyline every 6 months which in my opinion takes pure genius.

**Boreas** · 01-16-2009, 01:16 AM

Re: A guide to help your MMORPG not fail fast

Originally posted by KillerStickMan View Post

I just want to defend GW in saying that the reason why they released so many expansion packs was to keep the game free. If you noticed they released an expansion pack in about the same amount of time that it would take Blizz to put out a major DL update. So really you're getting the same amount or even more content as Blizz gives you for half the price ($50 every 6 months or $15*6=$90). Although I have to say that Blizz has done an outstanding job in keeping new content and interesting content coming, I don't think it can compare to GW giving a new type of PvP, 2 new classes and a new storyline every 6 months which in my opinion takes pure genius.

I personally would rather have seen either just huge updates or at the very least expacs that dont replace the previous storyline

**megawhompertoo** · 01-18-2009, 11:13 PM

Re: A guide to help your MMORPG not fail fast

meh. i (sorta foolishly, now looking back) paid for 18 months of lotro at $15 a pop, then upgraded to a lifetime membership when they offered the new expansion in November...-$200...yikes, but i figured if they kept releasing stuff, and i kept paying, i'd top $200 in short order...

...then discovered they broke all the stuff i thought was really fun, different, and interesting in the game.

now i'm recycling warhammer 40,000k and the three sequels for kicks and not relishing the thought of trying to play my money's worth in lotro.

lesson learned, mmo burned.

**RubyEclipse** · 01-28-2009, 03:14 AM

Re: A guide to help your MMORPG not fail fast

Interesting list, and definitely some points I agree with there. One stood out that I probably would disagree with, and I'll just mention why and explain the reasoning.

3. Free To Play
-To truly achieve awesomeness, You must create an MMO that is free to play. WoW is no exception. although i do believe WoW is by far the best MMORPG, the paying monthly deal is fail up the hole. But what is the ultimate of fail in this department is allowing a free section of the game, but another section for "Members". Why make almost half of your fan base feel like a smacktard for not forking up the dough? Thats like a system where you get laughed at if you dont have the cash. A heap of FAILrar for this is the Game Runescape http://runescape.com/members/members.ws

I used to and still work a little on Phantasy Star Universe, which is SEGA's current big MMO/RPG. We actually have both free demo servers and full subscription servers for the game on Xbox 360, and my time on both these (as well as in games like Runescape) has helped point out a couple key problems that happen without a subscription.

1. No income for support. Somewhere along the line, Game Masters have to get paid, as does all customer support, and developers have to get funding to create more content. The only real alternative to subscriptions is cash shops - and I think most western players (myself included) prefer earning their items and status online, not buying into it because they happen to be loaded with cash in real life. That, or release a lot of different expansions like Guild Wars does - though this won't work for most MMO's.

2: No way to effectively remove problem users. In a free to play system, it's much harder to keep rule breakers out of your game. There is little to stop them from signing back up again, doing whatever it was they were doing before, and repeating this over and over and over. (Runescape is a shining example.) However, the moment they have a credit card tied to their account, not only does it mean that each time they want to try and mess things up they could lose that month's money, it also means you can track them easier and put in better protection - all of this is ultimately to keep your legitimate players happy, since they don't have to deal with Bob the RMT scammer coming back every ten minutes. On our PSU 360 demo, it's people to scam by 'selling free pr0n'.

I do agree with you that Runescape's method is amazingly annoying; I thought the same when I played it. Theirs is more of a "Use this feature... Just kidding! You need to pay to do that!", and I never enjoyed that part of the game. But admittedly it has worked a fair bit for them, considering Runescape seems to have a younger audience than most online games and still a huge number of paying subscribers.

Anyways, just my thoughts.

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