Lens on the State of MMOs: The Bad

And so we come to it at last...The Bad.  What is it about us humans where a "List of the Best" elicits far less interest than a "List of the Worst"?  We must have a gene for schadenfreude.

"Star Wars: The Old Republic" almost made it here, but there's enough quality in the game (at least one good go-through for just about anyone) that I can't call it bad.  But the "Rise and (Rapid) Descent of SW:TOR" would have to be one of the biggest MMO stories of the first half of the year.  And the "descent" part of that might just qualify as Bad.  If it continues, it'll definitely fall into Bad.

The Bad (Lee Van Cleef as "Angel Eyes")

38 Studios and Project Copernicus

If the disappointing SW:TOR was a kick to the testicles of Triple-A MMOs, Copernicus is a bullet to the temple.  If TOR made potential investors nervous, Copernicus has made them thoroughly lose bowel control.

The failures here are so massive that the collapse of 38 will be THE biggest story in MMO gaming this year, and the repercussions will last for a while.  The success of WoW ("Wait...how many million dollars per month in recurring revenue!?") brought a huge amount of capital into the MMO-making market.  38's failure will have the reverse effect, scaring off investors in droves.

And the combo platter of TOR's tepid (at best) return-on-investment of huge amounts of risk, together with 38 cratering into the ground will make the entire proposition of making an MMO, especially a big-money AAA title, largely untenable in the minds of most potential sugar daddies.

On a personal note, I'm really pissed about this.  No, it didn't directly have an effect on me or anyone I know.  As a human being (well, close enough), I deeply sympathize with those whose lives have been upended with little or no warning (see http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/172303/38_Studios_Spouse_speaks_out.php for info on how badly the employees got fucked).  As a gamer, I just see a vast amount of wasted effort and emotional, professional, and financial investment in something that appears to have been a mirage.

There still isn't a whole lot of hard information about what happened (although I expect more will seep out over time, like toxic waste from a rusty barrel), but I think as an outsider and follower of the industry I can point one finger at a huge, glaring, obvious failure...

Nobody (outside of the people directly involved) cared about the game.  Because nobody knew anything about the game.  The execs at 38 were evidently working on new financing at the time of the failure, but here's something that eluded them...investors are more likely to invest when there's a lot of interest in the product.

Just before the studio went tits-up, 38 claimed the game would launch in June, 2013.  I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume this is relatively accurate.  If true, they should have started the hype train up a year ago.  At least.  Because they didn't start showing character screenies or area fly-throughs until the company was on a respirator.  And that's beyond "way too late".

Pretty simple:  Investors want to know the game will succeed.  A good indicator of success is a slavering base of fans willing to sell organs to get their hands on a beta invite.  You can't have that kind of fan base if you insist on keeping the wraps on the game.  For Christ's sake, we don't even know what the NAME of the fucking game was going to be!  Kind of tough for the fans to get worked up.  Even tougher to convince investors.

Whatever else led to the crash-and-burn, as an outsider, I feel safe in saying that this was a factor in the death of 38 Studios and the fact we'll never see "Project Copernicus" (seriously, even now you don't know or can't tell the fucking name!?).  And a totally avoidable factor.

I don't know, maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill (why moles?), but I wanted to care about Copernicus.  I wanted to know more and look forward to it and get excited.  And they denied us even that much.

And they crapped in the stew for everyone else looking to make MMOs.

You want Bad?  Hard to get more Bad than that.

Lord of the Rings Online

The game's not bad at all.  It's pretty good, actually.  Sometimes it even borders on great.  When it went free-to-play I expressed my opinion that if this led to the developers cranking out a stream of quality content to encourage player retention and new-player enlistment, it would be a big win-win for everybody.

Ah, such a dreamer.

Since LotRO has gone F2P it has gone Bad.  Really Bad.

LotRO has been my MMO home almost since launch.  As I type this I'm on vent with a bunch of my LotRO buds chatting.  But none are playing LotRO right now.  Only one of the six plays regularly, and she mostly just PvPs.

Turbine (and/or WB, exactly who's driving the train[wreck] is open to debate) have an astonishing gift for alienating people who loved their game.  It was, once upon a time, a game where the design was driven by lore and gameplay.  Now it's an exercise in commerce-driven game design, and what enrages so many former devotees is that it's so brazen about it.

They've perfectly demonstrated their naked avarice with the announcement of their latest expansion, "Riders of Rohan".

The previous expansion, "Rise of Isengard" was priced at $30/40/50 with various amounts of virtual goodies and Turbine Points (the post-F2P currency) and included the raid and the at-the-time unfinished instance cluster.

This expansion, "Riders of Rohan" is priced at $40/50/70(!?) with fewer virtual goodies NO Turbine Points and NOT including the unfinished raid or unfinished instance cluster which will have to be purchased at additional cost later.  Their reasoning for the increased price?  "Well, this expansion covers a lot more terrain!"

What.  The.  Fuck.  Are they thinking?

Unsurprisingly, the community went absolutely foaming-at-the-mouth batshit crazy and Turbine has thrown in the towel and will now include Turbine Points and the (still yet unfinished) instance content with purchase.  It only took countless deleted threads on the forums for them to get the message.

Now comes the really interesting question:  Did they really think they wouldn't get a rabidly unhappy reaction (in which case they are so clueless it's Bad) or did they know they'd get the reaction they did and intentionally plan to backpedal and "give in" to make it seem as if they listen to the community and give a shit about the players (in which case they are evil, which is kinda inherently Bad).

This is what LotRO has turned into...Turbine are greedy, lying bastards.  Oh wait...I didn't mention the lying?

"We'll never sell gear through the store that is better than what's craftable or drops at level in-game."  Yeah, they started doing that a few months back and have changed their story to "We'll never sell endgame gear through the store that's better..."  Mmhmm, pull my other leg.

And they've told PvPers before every expansion (and it seems like before every content patch) that there was a new PvP map in the works.  Just this week they admitted that a new PvP map is not in the plan any longer.  Somehow, even if they tell me they just came to that conclusion, I won't believe them.  After the one-shot money grab of selling advanced PvP traits for Turbine Points, there's just no revenue for 'em in PvP...so screw it.

The whole game design mindset is commerce-driven now.  It permeates every decision that gets made.  How does fixing bugs directly monetize?  How does improving play balance improve the balance sheets?

There are still good people doing good work on LotRO, but even the most dyed-in-the-wool fans I know are turned off by what Turbine's doing and trying out other games.

F2P isn't bad.  Converting a subscription game into F2P isn't bad.  Lord of the Rings Online is driving loyal customers off, and that's really Bad.

The MMO Players

Yep, us.  You.  Me.  How can I blame us for what's wrong?  Easy-peasy, let me count some ways!

1)  Infatuation with Triple-A titles...Guilty, as charged!  How many smaller games have I talked about so far?  Yep, that would be zero.  A few months back I spent some time in the Glitch beta.  A very nifty, extremely atypical browser-based game.  In fact, at some point, I'll have to write about it.  But I have to admit, I obsess about the big-name big-game MMOs.  It's easy to miss a small gem while staring at a great big pile of ordure.

2)  Whining...Guilty, as charged!  If it seems that MMO players act like entitled whiny little bitches, it's probably because we act like entitled whiny little bitches.  The signal to noise-ratio on game forums isn't almost zero or even zero, it's negative.  The real problem is two-fold, we usually complain indiscriminately and unconstructively.  I still tend to complain about things big and small, but I am getting better at doing so in a constructive fashion.  This blog is meant to help me continue to increase my...constructivity?  Is that a word?  The blogging tool says "No!"

3)  Gold farming...no, not the semi-slave labor in China or wherever doing the work, or even the soulless creatures selling the product...the stupid bastard players buying it.  Really, if you've ever bought gold and complained once thereafter about gold sellers, do us all a favor and swallow a few handfuls of tacks.  Most players absolutely loathe everything about gold farming, but if no players bought gold, no sellers would exist.  D3 is trying to deal with it by legitimizing it (and boy will that have a HUGE impact on MMOs going forward if it works for them), but I'm more hopeful that GW2 has found a good way of de-incentivizing it with their approach on their gem store.  /fingerscross

4)  Gaming Assholes...Guil...actually, no.  I am sometimes an ass, but I'm not a Gaming Asshole.  Gaming Assholes are the guys (mostly guys) who do things like:  sexually harass female players, gank, flame, tea-bag or /spit on PvP corpses, calling others "noobs" who "suck", throw around racial/religious insults, make inflammatory political statements, ninja-loot, etc.  We all see behaviors in-game every day where somebody treats it like it's zero-sum...they increase their enjoyment by decreasing the enjoyment of others.  It's pathological and sometimes even sociopathic.  If your real life is so miserable that you feel the need to inflict unhappiness on others in a game to feel better...seek professional assistance.  Actually, I don't give a crap if you seek help or not...feel free to sit and fester in your own filth, but please log out first.

5)  Fanboys and haters.  Pretty simple...fanboys do MMOs no favors when they blindly and unquestioningly support the makers.  Tell the guys in charge what you love but also what could use some work.  That's positive feedback that will improve the game you love.  Haters do nobody any favors when they blindly slag everything a company does or says.  Did SOE fuck all of the SWG players with the NGE?  Of course they did.  Should they have had their feet held to the fire over it?  They sure as hell deserved it.  But it's been YEARS...get over it.  Because PlanetSide 2 looks pretty goddamned good!

I could probably come up with more, but you get the idea.  MMOs are made for us, and we make up the community.  We can't make a bad game good, but we can make any game better.  When they give us a theme park, remember the Disneyland is more fun if the guy next to you in line doesn't punch you in face and pour his beer on you (yes, I know, no beer in Disneyland, nitpicker).  When they give us a sandbox, remember that no one likes what the cat may have buried in it.

Don't be what the cat buried.  Because that's Bad.